This article was first printed in the Autumn issue of Green Pebble Magazine. Printed with permission. www.greenpebble.co.uk. Written by Ruby Ormerod

With London responsible for a significant proportion of the world’s multi-billion pound art market, Britain’s capital city is now truly a Mecca for aspiring artists. But as those artists mature, many move away to continue their work elsewhere.

Follow the crowds through Britain’s capital and the attraction to aspiring artists of the city becomes immediately apparent. In some streets dazzling galleries outnumber almost all other retail outlets. The footfall along West End’s Cork Street alone guarantees more interest from prospective art buyers than can be dreamed of elsewhere in the country, and add to that the possibility of being hand-picked by a savvy gallery manager or benign collector, and London becomes truly irresistible.

Even today, despite uncertain economic conditions, the mood of the capital’s art scene remains reasonably buoyant. Fine art auctions at Bonhams, Christie’s and Sotherby’s were still fetching record prices when Green Pebble went to press. In May 2008, Lucian Freud’s 1995 nude, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, sold for an unprecedented US$33.6 million (with fees); a month later his Girl in Attic Doorway, sold at Art Basel for US$12 million.

‘The art market doesn’t necessarily follow the money markets or the investment market,’ Christie’s Europe President, Jussi Pylkkanen, told the Financial Times in an interview with Peter Aspden in late May. ‘Frequently, when there are forms of downturn in certain economies, the art market is a place where some investors seek to [invest].’

It is conceivable, experts say, that collectors feel genuinely confident about the quality and value of British art on offer nowadays; hence the willingness to continue investing.

Given such endorsement, London must be the jewel in any British artist’s crown, especially as the pressure on existing artists to find viable markets continues to grow.

Nigel Casseldine
A fulltime painter, Essex-born Nigel Casseldine is one of thousands of artists who depend significantly on the London market for their livelihood. Although Nigel and his wife, Jenny Partridge, have opened their own gallery in Tunstall, between Woodbridge and Aldeburgh in Suffolk, he openly admits they ‘couldn’t survive’ without London. ‘Here, in East Anglia,’ he says, ‘people drift in and out, especially in the summer. London has a greater core of people all year round.’

In order to tap into both markets, Nigel produces one style of painting for his gallery and another for his London shows. The former includes ever-popular local oil scenes of the Suffolk coast; the latter are his far more quirky and exciting ‘Pixey Green’ paintings in which he explores heart-felt impressions of vernacular Suffolk; the Suffolk of past and present, unashamedly interpreted and reduced to a handful of tonal colours, bee hives, hay stacks and the occasional ‘working man’.

In London, he exhibits these primarily through the Medici Gallery, a contemporary figurative art gallery on Cork Street where his paintings fetch between ₤800 and ₤5000. He has had ten one-man shows there since joining them in the late 1980s (he exhibits every other year) and hangs up to 40 paintings per exhibition.

Medici Gallery’s Jenny Kerr remembers starting with the gallery nearly twenty years ago and being ‘rather under-impressed’ by the work being exhibited at the time. ‘Until I saw Nigel’s work,’ she says. ‘Suddenly, here we had life, colour, academic skills, all acting together to produce wonderful paintings.’

Of all the artists exhibiting at Medici at the time, Nigel is the only one still exhibiting with the gallery.
‘He has been able to move his work in a steady, progressive manner, taking his collectors with him and constantly adding new buyers,’ Jenny Kerr explains. ‘Never falling into a rut of repetitive images or losing the essential essence of a Casseldine painting. After all these years, he is still able to show the viewer a fresh interpretation of an interior, still life or landscape.’

He was, she adds, the first painter whose work she bought, and she is still collecting his work two decades later.

A Royal West of England Academician member since 1991, Nigel’s journey to Cork Street was far from conventional. His introduction to art began at the age of 18 working in a London business which sold equipment to the printing trade. The company held classes in the use of its offset lithograph machines and Nigel, as an assistant, was encouraged to practise drawing on the plates.

This practice proved so valuable that from 1967 to 1972 he joined artist Francis V Magrath as a studio assistant; an opportunity he describes as ‘the biggest stroke of luck I’ve ever had’. Through him Nigel not only refined his drawing skills but met Royal Academy members who actively encouraged him. He enrolled in part-time classes at Camberwell College of Arts and, later, at the Sir John Cass School of Art, Media & Design.

However, by 1973 he was ready for a change. This took the unusual and über-romantic shape of a converted ambulance. Travellers in the traditional sense, Nigel and Jenny left London to roam the English countryside for the next decade, enjoying their freedom to such an extent that they named their Tunstall gallery ‘Romany Studio’ in memory of the experience.

Their plan was simple and wholesome. In the summer they travelled, parked and painted local scenes which they sold for ₤5 a picture. In the winter they rented a cottage, sometimes in Norfolk or Suffolk, and painted.

They befriended local artists and art suppliers; some remain friends to this day. Jenny, a wildlife illustrator, was discovered by a publisher whilst the ambulance was quite literally parked in a lay-by and through him she signed her first contract to illustrate a series of children’s book. Many more contracts followed. Nigel tells of how she used to receive letters quaintly addressed to ‘Jenny Partridge, Under the Oak Tree, Lower Slaughter’, where they used to park.

With the arrival of children and responsibilities came the time to retire the ambulance. Ten years after hitting the road to create ‘art for everyone’, Nigel had fortunately also built up a track record with numerous galleries and his work had come to the attention of the Royal West of England Academy. He became an Academician Member in 1982 and six years later won the RWA’s Brandler Painting Prize.
Nigel believes Medici first approached him at the Bath Art Fair. Not that he can remember all the details; it was such a long time ago.

‘In order to show in London, you have to concentrate on quality, on your draughtsmanship, on the way you put it together,’ he says when asked what aspiring artists must do if they are to succeed in the Capital. ‘You have to think of everything, that’s important. The London market doesn’t want just one good picture, your work has to be consistent and have quality.’

Happily settled in what was once a post office, Nigel has used the family’s move to Tunstall to develop his Pixey Green series. Although named after a tiny hamlet near Stradbroke in Suffolk, the paintings bear no resemblance to their namesake. They are Nigel’s interpretation of everything he loves and feels about Suffolk.

What makes the Pixey Green paintings especially lively are the haystacks and beehives which give the pictures rhythm. Old fashioned and whimsical, they are positioned where other artists might place a figure or tree. To point. To provide direction.

‘I love the shape of the beehives,’ he says. ‘And I don’t want to paint plastic-wrapped haystacks, where’s the romance in that? If you’re not painting what turns you on, the paintings aren’t going to be turned on.’

His paintings are deliberately small, sometimes only 9 inch by 9 inch, to ensure his work is accessible.

‘There are a certain number of people who are able to go to London and pay [large amounts] but most can’t. I wouldn’t want to lose that contact with the ordinary man. There’s nothing more complimentary than having someone with an ordinary job who loves what you do and can buy it. That’s as thrilling as having a millionaire buy something.’

Fortunately, he’s had one or two of those come knocking as well. The Marqis of Bath at Longleat and the playwright Tom Stoppard are known to have bought a Nigel Casseldine or two for their private collections.

Nigel Casseldine’s work can be viewed at the Romany Studio, Tunstall, Woodbridge, Suffolk, Tel: (01728 688264), website: www.romanystudio.co.uk. He runs art classes throughout the winter.

For a copy of the extended article (which includes interviews with Rosemary Carruthers of Fakenham, Suffolk, and Paul Robinson in Cromer, Norfolk) please contact www.greenpebble.co.uk