“I was twenty when I first visited Cyprus College of Art. After nine months at UCL studying Art History & Philosophy – a bachelor’s degree which if I’m honest, I should never have enrolled on – I went in search of somewhere I could draw out some of my pent up creativity. An old art teacher of mine from school told me about a place in Cyprus he’d been to in the eighties… it was an institution of sorts, built for artists by the legendary painter Stass Paraskos fifty years ago. 

Since then, he told me, folk have travelled to the college from all over the world to find inspiration, refuge, affordable studio space, good weather, and a good time. He was sure it still existed. It did. I spent the entire summer there that year. I found solace in the little stone huts and under the tin roofs which sat in a landscape so filled with stories and life that it cracked the earth… snakes and myths and mosquitoes, fig trees, pomegranates and banana farms. I fell in love with the long hot days and sticky nights, with the wine and the fruit and the ocean, and with the ghosts of the artists who’d been there before.

Every year since that first summer the college has dragged me back. I made this work during and between the two trips I made to Cyprus at the end of last year. I suppose the paintings are in many ways a summation of all the work I’ve ever made there.”

Nell Nicholas