Nicola Burrell is a Colchester-based artist and sculptor who creates three-dimensional artworks that reflect her fascination with built environments and artificial spaces. Her creative process often begins with drawing and mapping out various locations, allowing her to capture the essence of concrete buildings and footbridges found in New Towns like Harlow and Basildon.

Creative process

Nicola’s unique approach involves layering found materials to create three-dimensional reliefs. Some of her pieces are composed of hundreds of individual elements, resulting in a rich, textured surface that brings her visions to life.

Nicola draws her inspiration mainly from urban environments, particularly from forgotten or overlooked aspects of modernity’s past. Her paintings often depict abandoned shipyards, 1950s shopping areas, social housing projects, and neglected seafronts.

What to expect

In her latest collection of mixed media paintings, Nicola explores her studies of New Towns in Essex. Her initial drawings focus on the architectural characteristics, while her more recent works, created with brightly coloured Posca pens, express a dream-like and futuristic vision of these spaces.

‘This ‘building-up’ follows my intuitive methods, where being hands-on with my materials is part of how I think. For me, this is part of the life and vitality of the work. On the one hand, I want to capture a sense of life in forms and places, and I want to create work where the gestures of its making are present in the finished piece’ – Nicola Burrell.