If life imitates art, as novelist Oscar Wilde famously wrote, nothing truer could be said for artist Nigel Sense, whose wildly adventurous works could be seen as a precursor to the nomadic life he now leads. Sense’s oeuvre has always centred around wanderlust, but it was in 2019, when he and his wife sold their home and packed up their lives in Australia to live with no fixed address, that his life embraced the adventurous spirit his works have always portrayed.
Since gaining an Associate Diploma of Fine Art from West Wollongong Technical College in 1994 and completing a Bachelor of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong in 2006, Sense has exhibited extensively both locally and internationally. He has exhibited in the Salon de Refusés, Sydney in 2018 and 2019, been a finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Art Prize, Sydney in 2013, 2016 and 2017, and a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize, Sydney in 2017, and 2018. For Sense, inspiration comes from anywhere and everywhere, from the Pink Floyd album covers he had as a teenager to the pattern on a tile on a restaurant floor in Penang.
The most important influence comes from travel itself and the fleeting, anxiety-filled moments of not knowing what’s coming next. “It’s these little snap shots that become paintings,” says Sense, “but more importantly make me a better and happier person.”
Sense draws inspiration from the American Abstract Expressionists and the Pop Art era of the 1960s, turning mass reproduction and the influence of mass media into subject matter. He describes himself as a neo-expressionist, using the signs and symbols of the everyday to capture the essence of chaotic moments and distil familiar scenes of disarray.
In his paintings Sydney to Darwin, 2021 and Tiwi Islands, 2021, tracks weave in and out and arrows pull the eye around to different corners of the canvas in bright pops of lurid pink, yellow and green. “The paintings are my travel diary,” he says. “I just use shapes and colour instead of words.”
There is something comforting about the characters in Sense’s canvases, with their big, googly eyes and goofy grins. The works are inviting and yet the story remains elusive to the viewer, who can only ever piece together parts of what is happening in each bustling scene. Sense paints using fast-drying acrylics, allowing his vision to spill forth onto the canvas.
“I’m the kind of guy that’s always thinking about the next thing. I do love trying to find interesting materials to paint on, like in markets throughout Asia,” he says as he recounts the story of finding Vietnamese paper bags in a market in Ho Chi Minh City and using them for a series of works. These paintings became the basis of a large portion of Sense’s work in his latest exhibition and fourth solo at Fox Galleries, Melbourne, titled Departure Lounge.
The works in Departure Lounge are Sense’s documents of past travels, as well as those yet to come. For now, in a post-pandemic landscape when travel is still somewhat off-limits, what is guaranteed is the escapism you feel when looking at his paintings.
Featured image: Nigel Sense, Sydney to Darwin, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 140 x 160cm. Courtesy: the artist and Fox Galleries, Melbourne.