Nat Quinn considered one of the North's most exciting young artists

HAVING started out copying Disney characters and doing caricatures of friends and family, Northumbria University arts graduate Nat Quinn has been selected as the most promising young artist in the region, the one most likely to succeed on a professional basis.

Nat, 28, grew up in Ingleton, in Teesdale, and beat 232 other candidates to become the first person to win the £10,000 New Lights Arts Prize. The charity, set up last year, is designed to support up and coming young artists as well as making art more accessible. The 2011 prize was open to artists aged 23-35 who either live or gained an arts degree in the North of England.

Nat says he was overwhelmed at winning and had only entered for the experience.

“I didn’t expect to win at all,” he says. “The other artists short-listed were professional and established so I’ve been really lucky. It’s really difficult to break into art so hopefully it will help me pursue a career as a professional artist.”

He submitted four abstract paintings he did for his degree show and was selected from a shortlist of 24 other painters.

One thing that set Nat apart from the other candidates was his original techniques and the amount of time and effort he spends crafting his art. Although the painting itself takes two to three weeks, it takes him a couple of months to finish each piece because he makes all his own materials, including the canvas and cans of paint.

“I just like making my own things. It’s to do with wanting to know where all the materials come from,” he says.

Nat was born in Thailand and a lot of his work is inspired by images and references from his childhood. He moved to County Durham when he was nine and went to school in Staindrop, where he began drawing from a young age and says art was the only subject he was good at.

“I used to do caricatures of friends and family and draw Walt Disney characters,”

he says. “I used to copy the covers of video cases such as Beauty and The Beast and The Lion King and was more interested in the pictures on the cover than watching the films.”

He graduated from Northumbria University this summer with a First class honours BA in Fine Art and is currently on a two-year graduate scheme with the university. The scheme, Graduate Studio Northumbria, provides around 20 graduate artists with a studio and resources to help them develop and gain professional contacts.

As well as the £10,000 award, he will now receive professional guidance and mentoring from professional artist Emerson Mayes.

NAT describes his work as an amalgam of “contradiction, excavation, preservation, reality, and distortion”. One of his biggest influences is US art from the Forties and Fifties, widely regarded as the Golden Age of American Art.

The style was later adopted by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

The judging panel for the New Lights Arts Prize included Kate Brindley, Director of Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Mima) and Paul Hobson, Director of the Contemporary Art Society, who described Nat as a “very worthy recipient”.

“Nat Quinn’s delicate and ambiguous abstract paintings take as much from other media - like drawing and ceramics - as they do from the history of painting,” he said.

Nat’s paintings, along with those of the other candidates, are currently on display at The Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate. All the work is for sale.

Having had such a huge opportunity, Nat is hoping it will help him pursue his ambition and eventually have his work featured in galleries across Britain.

• Nat Quinn’s paintings are currently featured in an exhibition at The Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, until January 8. For further info, visit newlights.org.uk