Page 20 - The Enso Circle Artists-in-Residence Exhibition Catalog, December 2022

About NAN ROCHE

the

Artist &

the Restless hands have been my life and a curiosity for how the

objects I see around me are constructed and why. It’s a good
Work recipe for an artist, a scientist and for an interesting life. It’s a
compulsion that I cannot remember ever not having. The people
and things that have held me closest, my parents, my teachers,
my friends, an encyclopedia of encounters with words, objects,
books, all have had a hand in this desire.

My mother was a painter, my father an engineer. Making things
and questioning things were present from my earliest memories.
Collecting ideas and objects was a family avocation that became
my own. I was always an artist, I became a scientist and the two
pursuits never seemed separable. These are the scaffolds that
inform what I do every day.

My work is informed by writing poetry. I have learned that my
best words are born of a mysterious process of emptying my
mind, a ride on an undercurrent not wholly of my own making.
One never knows quite what might be revealed by some “unseen
hand”in the series of words and thoughts that emerge from a
particular beginning.

If I am lucky, it surprises me. This process is what I strive for in
my drawings. At its best, each line, each color forms a kind of
inevitability for the next and if I am lucky, it surprises me. I hope
the viewer will be surprised by this piece, just a little, too.

RECONCILIATION
Water soluble charcoal on watercolor paper

12” x 18”
NFS

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