Richard Nott (1963-2025)
It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of British painter Richard Nott (1963–2025), at the age of 62. Widely regarded as one of Cornwall’s most influential and ambitious contemporary artists, he created a singular body of work that continually pushed the parameters of painting.
Nott gained his Fine Art degree at Lancashire Polytechnic and an MA in Fine Art at the University of Reading, then worked as an assistant to Andy Goldsworthy on site-specific sculptures in the Lake District. He was briefly a gallery assistant at the Royal Academy and at Oldham Art Gallery, before winning the South West Arts Visual Arts & Photography Award in 1994 and later a residency at the 12th International Weeks of Painting in Slovenia. A long-term tenant at the renowned Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, he went on to establish his own studio complex at The Forge in Hayle, and most recently worked from Bay House, overlooking St Michael’s Mount. Exhibitions were extensive and international, notably including numerous solo exhibitions at Anima Mundi over a long and intimate working relationship, Art Now Cornwall at Tate St Ives, and Chashama on Avenue of the Americas in New York City.
Viewing Richard Nott’s work is to witness a sustained collision of creative and destructive processes—matter exposed, concealed, exposed, concealed, continuously. He had little interest in illusionistic “texture,” pursuing instead an intangible path in which the work must be its own entity, with its own story and its own statement. His objective was to create an organic object that evolved like a living thing, with truth and imperfection. His process allowed a contemplation of a cycle of existence to become imbued in the work: not a beginning and an end, but a journey where genesis leads to dissolution, and then once again to genesis—something eternal, akin to alchemy.
Richard defied the odds by continuing to make work throughout his six-year battle with acute myeloma, right up to the end—confronting and overcoming significant hurdles by adapting his methods in order to continue to tell his truth.
“Richard’s passing is a huge loss. Before each exhibition Richard would talk about how he looked forward to ‘the gallery lift,’ when he would get to see the work he had fought so hard to make with fresh eyes. The truth is, it was always the gallery that benefitted from ‘the Richard Nott lift.’ His paintings remain as unique as they are significant. The unpretentious graft that went into their genesis was completely and inextricably tied to their maker. Richard admired the heroic 20th-century American abstract painters who influenced him early on. ‘Heroism’ is an often overused, semi-machismo word in painting, but one that I think truthfully applied to Richard throughout his constantly risk-taking career. The way he continued to push—against the odds he faced in the latter part of his life—to make the making of his art his goal and his constant was both inspiring and truly heroic. A light has gone out; my friend has gone, yet alchemy is the search for the eternal. I’m so glad we will still have Richard’s work here with us, made in the image of its maker.” — Joseph Clarke, Director of Anima Mundi
“I’m at my best when I make, and I break, and I experiment. That is when things emerge… you’re never going to move forward unless something goes astray; it’s about waiting for the accidents to happen and then responding to it—the risk is huge. I don’t want it to be about the materials; it is about the transformation where a base material is elevated into something else. I’m interested in getting to the underlying nature of things, searching for what is beneath the veneer. I’ve said to people that the artists I like most have been working on one painting their whole lives, and that is the sort of art I’m drawn to, because it is about oneself, isn’t it? Just keep working on it—working on yourself. The million things that sit behind the surface, the doubts and struggles that are in the painting… The things that I leave in the work, or that evolve in the work, are the strength of the work—the stuff about fragility, the human condition. I’m the one who is pushing them that far, finishing them, when I recognise myself in them. I don’t really like art quotes like that—I get embarrassed by it—but that’s probably the reality… I am making myself.” — Richard Nott
We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and the many people touched by his life and his art.