Biography
I am Nathan Downie (Nashīnasu ナシーナス in my art career since 2020), a multidisciplinary multi award-winning artist with autism based in England using my paints and graphite to create intriguing reimagining’s of our world. An artistic style that integrates the historical greats of animation, surrealism, and gestural painting my works of art border between the real and the abstract.
My journey to becoming an artist began as a child. At a young age, I discovered a love of animation, especially the greats like Studio Ghibli and Disney. I began drawing and creating my own worlds of escape. The act of creation became a cathartic space that continues to elevate my mood to this day. My talents began to be recognized by my secondary school teachers at Wallington Boys School who encouraged me to develop my own distinctive artistic practice. I dove deeper into understanding art, developing a fascination with individuals such as Stephen Wiltshire and Salvador Dali.
As my practice grew, I took elements from these foundational influences and combined them with my love of music, anime, and Japanese culture. I went on to receive a Level 2 Diploma in Art & Design from Nescot College and graduate from The Art Academy, London Bridge with a Fine Art diploma and completed their Postgraduate Programme. Today, my work coalesces my past experiences, my love for music and film, and the historical artists and designers who came before as I create cinematic works that challenge us to change our perspectives.
While I continue to grow my practice, my work has already been recognized internationally from the United Kingdom to the United States as well as Japan and South Korea. I have been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions with more on the horizon. I won numerous accolades including the Collector's Art Prize (2023), Persona Art Honours (2024), International Prize PHOENIX for the Arts Winner (2024) and a runner-up at The Art Academy for the Drawing Prize, and have had my art added to local private collections.
Accolades
Artist Statement
Rooted in storytelling, my practice emerges through works that recollect past experiences, iconic images of popular culture that transcend time, and even abstracted formulations of our intangible emotions. While a multidisciplinary artist, working with everything from pastels to photography, my practice centers around my acrylic and oil paintings as well as my use of graphite pencil. Placing these mediums upon a range of materials including canvas, medium-density fibreboard (MDF), and paper, I investigate the world around us.The distinctive style of my practice is the culmination of my love of anime, manga, Disney, Studio Ghibli, and Japanese culture. Artists such as Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki, Hiroyuki Morita, Salvador Dali, and Stephen Wiltshire have all imprinted their innovative styles and perspectives onto me as I developed my own illustrative practice that borders between reality and the absurd. Manipulations of color and space reveal vignettes and theatrical glows of light bordering on the cinematic. From my mediums radiates an invisible force beyond our control, unknown yet inspiring hope, though my use of gestural brushstrokes evokes a sense of ceaseless movement and change.My work is an evolution. Each piece is a reflection of myself, an almost autobiographical account of the influx of influences, passions, and interests that resonate with me. In my early works, I adapted an abstracted surrealist style of landscape and still life that today has branched out into experimentations with evocative portraiture and scenes of the everyday. Through this growth, I constructed my signature approach to elevating these scenes with what I refer to as light particles. Inspired by the work of Yayoi Kusama, I delicately insert light particles that heighten the drama and emotional atmosphere. Contrasts of light and dark, emphasized plays of shadows and illumination, obscure our perceptions leaving distinctions vague and open for interpretation. In a body of works teetering between the real and the ethereal, I ask us to question the mysteries of existence, the world, and ourselves.