Nigel Conway

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Nigel Conway

Nigel Conway was born in 1966 in Leigh, outside of Manchester, England. Famous for his abstract figurative paintings with their captivating big eyes and lips, Nigel has made his career into an artistic adventure, continually exploring new subjects and creating paintings that excite him and his collectors.

His self-taught style combines his playfulness and deep connection with the subjects he paints, working on a painting sometimes for months just to add a minute detail. Nigel’s paintings have an almost magnetic effect on their viewers, attracting collectors both nationally and internationally. His work is displayed in public and private collections across the world.

Nigel now lives just outside Santa Fe, NM with his wife and son.

‘ There’s something slippery about the art of Nigel Conway– in the sense that his paintings are in the gallery for about as long as it takes ice to melt… and then they are gone. The buyers wander in, fall in love with the lacquer-faced characters, slap down a credit card and out they go. They’re like little pieces of candy, these paintings—with their licorice lines and glossy palette of cherry syrup and kirsch. A slippery surface like a sweet party glance from a stranger. Look around yourself and enter. A scruffy bartender offers up a drink: Kokoschka liquor with a splash of Arbus citron. Agitated softly, then strain into a fine-strem cocktail garnished with Egon Schiele mint leaf. That’s the Conway cocktail—a pretty-in-pink hyperchromatic julep for the eyes. Serve it up with a maraschino cherry bomb and the art world is whet again with an alluring fizz.’

-Louis Leray

‘The thing about painting for me, the big deal about it, is that I feel compelled to do it every day and to do it at new levels. There’s always something going on in my head, some nonsense up there that I am trying to achieve. So I am compelled to do it. If I let my head wrap around the task of painting, I wouldn’t have a painting out there. My head would have never given me the permission to start being a painter in the first place.’

-Nigel Conway

Selected Public Collections added in 2011
New Mexico Arts Permanent Collection , Bataan Memorial Building, Santa Fe, NM
Portales Public Health Department, Portales, NM