Nanette Madan
Lake District based multi-cultural artist Nanette Madan turned professional in 2005. Nanette has two passions, art and science and holds a PhD in Plant Physiology. She worked as a research fellow for ten years in the fields of climate change and anthropogenic nitrogen pollution impacts on polar ecosystems in both the High Arctic and Antarctic. For Nanette, art and science are inextricably linked. The creative process of designing experiments is very similar to making art and her areas of study informs her art practice to this day. Her artwork often features an individual, surrounded by nature, as a means to immerse the viewer in the natural world, with the belief that if we connect more with our natural surroundings, we are more likely to want to protect it for future generations. Children are sometimes highlighted in her work, not only because she is a mother herself, but also because it serves to emphasise the fragility of the balance between people and the planet and how we are not separate from the ecosystem.
Nanette likes to experiment in printmaking, having attended a course in dry point and collograph printing at the Curwen Print Study Centre near Cambridge. In 2022 she exhibited in a collaborative group exhibition, comprising of 60 printmakers to commemorate 1900 years since the start of the build of Hadrian’s Wall, which showed at Northern Print in Newcastle and Florence Arts Centre in Egremont. She also had a monoprint shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2021. Other preferred mediums include oil pastel and pastel pencil, as these are very portable, don’t need drying time and the colours are vibrant and velvety. Nanette was selected as a wildcard artist and took part in the plein air painting competition Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year (aired in January 2023), where these mediums came into their own in terms of their versatility. She also won an art prize at Lowes Court Gallery in 2021 — the bright colours afforded by these mediums in her picture helped her to elevate her portrayal of a market town, past its heyday, to another level, highlighting its colourful heritage. Nanette has exhibited with the Lake Artists in Grasmere and had a solo exhibition at the notable Victorian art critic John Ruskin’s house, Brantwood in Coniston, where one of her pictures still resides.
