At first glance Nicholas’ fine porcelain sculptures appear so perfect it is almost impossible to believe that they are made by hand. However, each of his sculptures are started as massively thick-walled vessels hand thrown on the potter’s wheel. The vessels are then taken to a lathe when the clay is leather hard and are carefully turned to perfection by hand – a process that involves huge risks and requires an enormous amount of patience, not to mention skill.

Titled Small Triptych, this work relates to the shoreline between high and low tide and there’s a great variation in stasis and movement of the fins of each of the carefully crafted porcelain pieces. In general Nicholas’s work attempts to manifest qualities of shadows as representations of the hinterland between 2 and 3 dimensions and between presence and absence, making a material penumbra. These ideas have been informed by a lifetime of visiting and looking at the same stretch of Scottish coastline, bringing the realisation that the constant shift of tide, water and light mean the experience of perception is forever transient.