Nicholas Knapton
“Surfing with a Life Jacket”
The work is about perspective—of the figure, on myself, on paper, on canvas. Ten small drawings wrestle with seizures: containment, interruption, collapse, repair. The large canvases take on the figure at scale, where the body becomes both subject and opponent.
My neurologist told me that if I were to surf, I’d have to surf with a life jacket. The image is absurd, impossible, necessary. Protection and suffocation at once. That tension runs through everything: the body versus the idea, ego versus shame, resistance versus surrender.
What remains is persistence. A refusal to stop dragging the figure, and myself, back into the frame—again and again—until movement itself becomes the subject.
“Surfing with a Life Jacket”
The work is about perspective—of the figure, on myself, on paper, on canvas. Ten small drawings wrestle with seizures: containment, interruption, collapse, repair. The large canvases take on the figure at scale, where the body becomes both subject and opponent.
My neurologist told me that if I were to surf, I’d have to surf with a life jacket. The image is absurd, impossible, necessary. Protection and suffocation at once. That tension runs through everything: the body versus the idea, ego versus shame, resistance versus surrender.
What remains is persistence. A refusal to stop dragging the figure, and myself, back into the frame—again and again—until movement itself becomes the subject.
