Interiors
Background
Within my painting practise I have engaged with interiors in a variety of ways. For example, I drew on my experiences of Japanese architecture while living in Japan and made a series of paintings, one of these works is entitled ‘Wood and Paper’. Portable shrines (Butsudan) are frequently found inside Japanese houses. I took my feelings and observations of these intimate and spiritual spaces as a source of ideas for designs with another interior series.
After losing friends and family I would sometimes approach interiors as a cathartic encounter. My friend Marion died in 1998 and in the same year I began making drawings of the interior of her house. It was done as a way to acknowledge and remember our time together, seen through the rooms, corridors and stairwells of her home where we used to meet. These drawings were used for a series of paintings, ‘Landing’ 2003 is from this sequence. I have also worked with interiors as a way of celebrating my emotional attachment to spaces where I used to live. These works were made as a homage to environments that were full of unique energies.
Nigel Caple
2021
