Student Spotlight: Nicholas Samuel Heskes '18
The Student Spotlight series aims to highlight the work of current MFA students, asking them to share thoughts on their practice by answering curated and peer-submitted questions. Nicholas Samuel Heskes is a student in the Visual Arts Program.
What themes or subjects are you currently addressing in your work?
Lately I’ve been struggling with representations of death; specifically, anxiety about the presentness of death. The trope of momento mori in painting has a long history, but it’s symbolism is canonical and narrow. I’ve been attempting to draw attention to a reminder of death, but through obfuscating the symbolism of that tradition. The more I investigate this topic however...the more I find it both full and lacking...
What materials do you work with?
I work primarily in oil on canvas or wood, or ink/pencil on paper. For now, I still find ways to experiment and discover within the picture plane.
What is challenging your practice right now?
The relative outdatedness of my subject matter has become a problem to consider. This is not to say that the themes I want to address are outdated, but the concern with being always contemporary seems to me both a ridiculous, impossible challenge, and a necessary condition of being a living artist. The question “how do you make artwork that looks contemporary?” is a terrible road block of a question, but one that does not disappear without applying force or tact... Ideally, I would like it to look neither outdated nor contemporary.
What artist or work of art do you find yourself returning to and why?
I find myself cycling through a variety of artists and artworks that I’m interested in, never settling on any one for too long. It’s less that I consciously return to an artist or work, but more that certain artists and works take up a kind of permanent residence in me. Their methods and forms can always be recalled, and I find them rushing to appear every time I begin work on anything.
Your peers ask: What is your favorite cereal?
I don’t eat cereal.