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52 The shop level at The Nifty Gallery, showing off some of the range of original paintings and prints by Nigel Emery.
in a collage form to create a picture. I sat back and thought ‘that is exactly what I hoped to achieve.’ I didn't realise at the time, but that afternoon's work would lead to a successful period for me in collage paintings. “I started travelling all round the world, collecting rubbish off the floor, flyers, business cards, anything that caught my eye. Then I would come back and paint a series of paintings of that area, be it New York, London or India. “After a few years, in 1995 I opened a gallery on Brighton seafront called Flotsam & Jetsam. I was one of five children and that is what my mother used to call us! “This was in the days before Brighton council invested in refurbishing the seafront, so it was typically dropout hippie types opening up studios in tiny units
that were cheap to run. They were great days!” For the best part of a decade, Nigel created his mixed media collages. But he then decided to develop his painting skills. Recently, 20 years after shelving his collage range, Nigel has decided to go back to his roots and make some more. “I love the naivety in them,” he said. “We all have a child in us, which we never really lose, and I loved going back to this old idea. “I went up to London and took about 1,000 photographs, but when I started assembling them into a picture, I found that I didn’t have enough! We ended up going back, hopping on sightseeing buses and Thames cruises and taking about 3,000 photos, then presenting them in a very naive way.