Focus on Nick Bodimeade
- James Stewart
- Aug 7
- 7 min read
Nick Bodimeade’s paintings combine his fascination with the transformative possibilities of painting and its practical processes, with his interest in landscape as a work place, a place of pleasure and leisure and a place of ever increasing environmental and social concern.
I have worked with Nick Bodimeade exhibiting his work since 2006.
See his page with examples of his current paintings on the Zimmer Stewart website.
A Review of Twenty Years Exhibitions and Subjects Covered
2006 - Beaches
In the first years Nick's subject were people on beaches, but not yet the 'pixelated' figures we know today, these Beach Geometry paintings were not developed until 2008.
Alongside the beach works, Nick's subjects varied from the semi-abstact landscape to cows and dogs to trucks and sheds. Quite a variety but always in his recognisable, broad brushstroke style with particular attention to colour.
2009 - Printmaking
From 2009 Nick Bodimeade started making prints, woodcuts and etchings (some with chin collé) - subjects for these were similar to the paintings: beaches, dogs, with some landscapes too. The 2013 Beach Cut series of woodcuts were particularly successful, and significant because they also used a technique from his painting: Reverse Painting. The figures were not drawn as such, but appeared through the background cuts in the wood block.
2014 - B Roads
2014 saw the first of Nick Bodimeade's B Road paintings. These were representing glimpses or a glance of a scene as if you are driving passed. They are quickly painted using broad brush strokes, and consequently some worked and could be exhibited, others painted over!
Chris McHugh wrote of the B Road works: "Paintings, at their best, are experience. The works by Nick Bodimeade comprising Tracks, Trails and Tarmac embody this axiom in the most compelling way. They speak in a resonant poetry of the rush and visual bloom of moving at pace through the world – the inky swell of shadows and the sudden glare of sunlight, the twisting counterpoint of bends coming up to meet us and the punctuating stab of detail defined …"
2015 - Southern Winds
In May 2015 we exhibited Southern Winds, an exhibition of new paintings. This series of paintings were inspired by a trip to the South USA the year earlier. These looked at houses on stilts on the Texas Gulf coast and pine forests in Arizona.
At Galveston he found hundreds of newly built, confectionery coloured pole houses on plots cleared by Ike and Katrina, waiting for their own test of wind and water.
He said "The visual evidence of huge elemental forces was a constant travelling companion."
Then Nick headed north for a while, exploring the snow dusted, fire and wind ravaged, ponderosa pine forested hillsides near Sedona, Arizona that provide the second strand of work in this show.
He said of these paintings: "Painters paint what they can and they select subjects accordingly. The pole houses here provide structure and a relationship to the rectangle and the mountains and forests layer space and light - these ingredients activated by the disorderly pictorial winds of gesture and mark."
2017 - Bostal
In 2017 Nick returned to painting the Sussex landscape with his Bostal series of painitngs. Bostal is an old Sussex word for track or path up a hill, these were an evolution or development from the B Road paintings a few years earlier.
At this time Nick produced a small number of paintings of the gardens and lake at Glyndebourne. These works were distinctive from the road and path paintings by the addition of new colours (oranges, pinks and purples etc) inspired presumably by the planting at Glyndebourne.
2020 - Lockdown
2020 and lockdown, saw the large woodland diptychs for the first time as well as paintings of the lily pads at Bevern.
The Bevern Stream is a 13-kilometre-long tributary of the River Ouse in East Sussex. It rises from chalk springs near Ditchling and Ditchling Common, flowing eastwards across clay and greensand to join the Ouse just north of Barcombe Mills.
2023 - Herd
In November 2023 we exhibited Herd by Nick Bodimeade at the Mill Studio, Ford. Inspired by a trip to New Zealand he wanted to paint cows on steep hill sides, with shadows hanging down the slope.
During the exhibition James Stewart discussed the work with Nick Bodimeade. Th resultant video provides an insight into the artist's inspiration and technique.
This film is essential viewing for artists and those wanting to look at paintings in a new way!
The discussion covered: The painting process; Representing 3d space in 2d; Painting as an object; Representation to abstraction; Examples including Monet's Water Lilies, Mondrians' Cows and the cave paintings at Lascaux ; Painting from photos and editing before painting; and Drawing techniques.
2024 - Art and Agriculture
In May 2024, we exhibited Art and Agriculture or Idyll in South Stoke Barn, near Arundel.
We said at the time:
"Our concept of Idyll is a contemporary representation of the landscape as we see it not some romantic pastoral image of rustic life” Artists, Matt and Nick Bodimeade
“A view from any window (or indeed of a painting) will be the same for each person, but they each perceive or take away a different meanings or interpretations depending on their own individual experiences and knowledge” Curator, James Stewart
“Much has changed in farming over the last 50 years; food production is still at the heart of what we do, but as ultimate custodians of this spectacularly beautiful corner of the English countryside we are committed to preserve it for generations to come.” Farmer, Ryan Haydon
“I want to unpick the discordant images, ideas and perceptions of the rural from the sub-urban/urban perspective in relation to the realities of modern British and Irish agriculture.” Artist, Agriculturalist and Researcher, Adam Stead.
During the exhibition we held a talk led by farmer, Ryan Haydon with all the participating artists: Matt and Nick Bodimeade, Adam Stead and Emma Hurst.
Ryan Haydon talked about how famring has changed in the last few decades, and then the artists joined. In this discussion we found out how growing up and working on South Stoke farm has been fundamentally influential in the art of both Matt and Nick Bodimeade. Similarly for Emma Hurst a move from Worthing to the foot of the Downs at an early age is reflected in her work.
See the Zimmer Stewart Blog post on Art and Agriculture, with text of the talks and video.
2026 - Plenty
Nick Bodimeade's current (2026) series of paintings are on the theme of 'Plenty': Excited by last year’s mast or glut crop Nick has been painting fruits, blossoms, verdant growth and abundance. In response to this plenty, and surrounded by his subject matter in his Orchard studio, he fills his canvases with sumptuously handled paint and evocative colour.
The exhibition includes a series of 'blossom' paintings and several new Bevern Stream works. These are exhibited with figurative bronze sculptures by Christopher Marvell.
Nick Bodimeade's Painting Process
He describes the experience of the landscape space as having for him a central role in both the experience of painting. Perhaps you have stood on a hill top and felt a desire to throw yourself into space, to consume and be consumed by it and maybe to have felt this desire to be located somewhere deep within.
he asks "What is it in our animal nature, our evolutionary history and our cultural field of reference that causes us to respond in particular and personal ways to such stimuli? Some finding evidence for god and ideas of the Sublime, and for others, more fundamental drives like the desire for food, shelter and procreation. For whatever reasons and in what proportions, how landscape and its representations engage with this atavistic stew of powerful feelings is a key interest."
In his paintings, evocative colour, illusionary space, tactile handling and formally articulate composition are applied to the photographic source material, reconnecting it to the mind/body experience of being in the outdoors.
Nick Bodimeade changes how he paints according to subject matter and how he wants the work to be experienced, sometimes working with intensely coloured, slippery, creamy paint and fluid, sensual gestures, at others, with thin, rainy, slurry colour and a more tentative drawing where the image feels as if it is just emerging from the material.
The ‘how’ of the painting as important as the ‘what’. Nick describes wanting his paintings to meet the viewer half way, engaging with shared experiences and ideas of our relationship to landscape and the flora and fauna that inhabit it.
Background
Nick Bodimeade has extensive teaching and advisory experience at a number of UK art colleges at Foundation, HND, BA and MA levels: Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College; University College Chichester; Canterbury Christchurch University College; Amersham & Wycombe College; Northbrook College, Worthing & North Oxfordshire College of Art and Design, Banbury.
SInce graduating Nick has been a full time artist and has exhibited across the South of England in a number of galleries.
He currently teaches at West Dean and the Emily Ball at Seawhite.
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