In Conversation With Nancy Cadogan
Extra! Extra!
12 October 2022
Introduction by Ashley Baker
We are here to talk about a true icon of our time: the one and only Nancy Cadogan. She has had an amazing career and has been showing her work for 20 years. She was born in America but lives in Northamptonshire now. She really paints from the imagination, literature, still moments, music—these things all factor heavily into her paintings.
Nancy really invites the viewer into her world and she’s had some great successes. In 2017, she had an amazing show at Saatchi called 'Mind Zero’ which made international headlines. In 2020, despite the raging pandemic, she managed to create another body of work which she showed at The Keats-Shelley House in Rome. She recently did a book, it’s called Soil To Table, in partnership with The Land Gardeners, and in May, she went to Paris where she was painting at the Ambassador's Residence.
She has spent the last five days here at Métier where she has been an Artist in Residence. This is a new experience for her and she has created these incredible works we see here.
Ashley: Nancy, thank you for joining us and for telling us about the process behind these paintings and your work. Firstly, how did you meet Melissa from Métier and how did this entire project come about?
Nancy: I met Melissa on a weekend away in Spain. When we were chatting, she told me about her brand. I was talking about my painting and it sort of transpired that, although our outputs might be different, a lot of things we were thinking about were quite similar. She very sweetly invited me to come and said ‘let's make a presentation over Frieze week. We would really love to support an artist and would you like to come and make some paintings here’.
Ashley: Nancy, you’ve done these in five days and have made it look so easy, but in fact, this requires a lot of preparation. Tell us about how you got ready and conceptualised these works?
Nancy: Melissa and I realised we had these shared interests: ideas about time and timelessness, making things that last without seasons. She invited me to come to the store and said ‘think about it, reflect on those ideas and see if you can make some work?’. I spent about a month thinking about how that might be. I was inspired by the store itself, looking at the chevrons on its walls. Then Hilary Mantle died, she’s an icon, an amazing writer, she talks a lot about Thomas Cromwell, who I depicted in the painting—a nod to the Hans Holbein portrait of him. She describes him and his love of leather, his love of detail, there’s a whole different narrative. I thought that was really interesting and wanted to bring that into the painting. It’s always like a mind map when painting, so in turn that makes you think about Holbein’s painting devices and how he would often put a book over a ledge, it cuts the plane.
Ashley: Do you have a title for these paintings?
Nancy: Yes, I’ve called them The Perfect Day and The Perfect Evening. This is my idea of the perfect day: having a coffee, reading a book—with a flying duck! And this—having a martini in a library—is a happy place for the evening.
Ashley: Tell me a little about the role of the birds here. It’s sort of the one living element in each piece.
Nancy: Often, my paintings have figures in them: normally female, normally with dark hair, but I didn’t think the figure idea worked for this, it needed to be more universal. The bird is alive, it animates the scene and it takes you off into the picture. This is not a still life, it’s a moment—birds are endlessly fleeting. You would think it would be raven in the second painting but ravens have a negative connotation. You want a blackbird, they have such a beautiful song, normally in the morning. And then here, it’s inviting you into the evening, and it starts the cycle all over again.
Ashley: You have these ghost elements too: the cup of coffee, the steam coming out of the pot, the half consumed martini—is this an olive or a twist? How does this nod to your previous work and how does it represent a departure for you?
Nancy: The idea of painting entirely from the imagination is where I’m heading to at the moment. The oak tree is something I’m working on at the moment, a big show about trees—a nod to something I'm thinking about a lot at present.
Ashley: You paint mostly in the countryside and all of a sudden this week you’ve been transported to Mayfair. How did that impact your process?
Nancy: This space is so amazing and so beautifully designed, you feel almost cocooned. The palette in the second painting is focused more on deeper, earthy colours such as sienna, venetian reds—leather colours. These paintings were entirely thought about by being here, physically, at the store. On a separate note, I’ve been trying to think about sustainability in paint: I wanted to go back to these earth colours, something more tonal. With regards to Mayfair, the colours, the cocoon and also great coffee.
Ashley: You have done some amazing work over the past few years. Can you talk to us about your experience painting at the Ambassador's house?
Nancy: That was my first moment painting live where people come in and become part of the conversation. Every conversation you have goes into what you paint, so why not actively acknowledge that when making the pictures: they become a scrapbook of your interactions. There was a green week at the British Embassy in Paris where they invited me to produce a work in response to all the talks that were taking place that week. I was there with all these children coming in, in the heart of Paris, it was amazing—I didn’t leave the building. I haven’t left this building either, they’ve had to kick me out!
Ashley: How do you make time for your creative work, especially when there is so much happening in the universe? You’ve managed to figure this out at your studio at home. Can you give us any tips, advice, insight into how you work?
Nancy: It’s interesting isn’t it: how do you carve out space and time? You’re making work about time, everything is about time, the greatest luxury of anything is time—especially when you’re a mother of three children, it’s difficult! The privilege of this week is that I’ve not actually opened my emails and haven’t answered the telephone—not done the school run which is amazing! Obviously, that’s not sustainable, so maybe you just have to carve out these moments. Being given opportunities: Melissa’s generosity to invite me in to make work that ordinarily I would never be able to make in this time. I have had the hours to be able to run with the thought and never leave the thought. Maybe that’s the greater privilege: to be so supported, to be invited in and to be given time.
Ashley: Thank you so much Nancy and thank you to our audience who joined us here and online. These paintings are going to be displayed next week during Frieze at Métier’s flagship. We have a question from our audience: what are you working on next?
Nancy: I have two big projects in mind and I’m not sure which is going to happen first. One is The Lost Trees, which is prompted by a large infrastructure project happening around us in the countryside, where lots of huge ancient oak trees are being chopped down. Obviously, one doesn’t want to get political about it, so maybe instead of being political we’re going to honour the trees and talk about it in a different way. It’s really interesting, the human history element to trees, there’s a lot being written about it and I don’t think I have a useful voice in that conversation—I think I'm more useful telling stories.
The second is that I want to make a big show in Italy about a place where we spend lots of time: big skies, lakes. That’s the plan.
Ashley: Nancy, thank you for joining us. Melissa, would you like to come up and say a few words?
Melissa: We are so happy and honoured to host you and congratulations on the amazing works! We drank a little too much Sangria in the Spanish countryside and said ‘let’s do this’ and here we are. It’s really fun to be able to work with someone else who’s creating and we’ve bonded over our shared values, I cannot believe what you have produced in the amount of time given.
Ashley, thank you for preparing, for asking such interesting questions and supporting people who are trying to do something different. That’s why we met and why I’m such a big fan. Your commitment to championing people like us really gives us a huge voice.
My very good friend Jan has a special artisanal vodka brand called Kavka. Inspired by Nancy’s work, particularly with trees, he and his team have taken a lot of fresh herbs and used them to create this bespoke martini. I am very lucky to be surrounded by so many talented friends, thank you so much and enjoy!
