Geoffrey Nawn
Propeller Member Since 2025
Born in Belfast, Geoffrey Nawn is a contemporary artist, writer and curator. After living mostly in England, he has been based in Canada since 2001. He graduated with a BA in Architecture in the UK, followed by post graduate studies in Art History and he holds a Masters Degree in Fine Art.
Enjoying successful parallel but connected careers in the UK, he has worked both as a widely exhibited Artist and as a Production Designer and Creative Director in Film and Television for the BBC.
For the BBC, as Production Designer and Art Director he has designed major Film and Television Productions across the fields of Drama, Entertainment, Music, Lifestyle, Documentary, Culture and Politics. He was Head of Design and Creative Director for FutureWorld, the BBC’s multi-million pound unique and defining Millennium project which toured the major cities of the UK for a year.
In Canada, he founded and ran until 2016, a multi-disciplinary Design and Branding company and in 2009, he founded GNstudio Contemporary Art as a gallery for serious art in Oakville and the GTA in Ontario.
At GNstudio Contemporary Art, from 2009 to 2016, he programmed, curated and managed group and solo exhibitions featuring major, established Canadian artists and emerging artists.
His writing on Art at www.thegeoffreynawnartblog.com provides a continuation of the ideals promoted at GNstudio Contemporary Art and an archive record.
As an artist, he has exhibited widely in group and solo shows across the UK. His Art practice is focused on Painting and Drawing which he sees as a site of both philosophical and aesthetic inquiry.
In Birmingham, England, he gave Museum talks, volunteered and participated in numerous group exhibitions and artist initiatives such as those by the Birmingham Art Group and Artists in Public. His first solo exhibition was in 1986 at the Midland Art Centre, in Birmingham, and subsequently his art has been seen in art museums and galleries in cities throughout the UK. Notable among these was work shown at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, the Cleveland International Drawing Biennale which toured museums across the country and the Athena Art Awards at the Barbican in London, England.
In Canada he has participated in group shows in Toronto and Oakville and has had work exhibited at Propeller as part of three Salon shows following invitations from members. He has now become a full member at Propeller.
Artist’s Website: www.thegeoffreynawnartblog.com
I am interested in aesthetic and philosophical inquiry.
Geoffrey Nawn
Across Painting, Drawing and Printmaking, my art practice explores areas of History, Myth, Time, Space and Memory.
Through a convergence of observation, the Imagination and the Unconscious, I draw upon metaphor, allegory and the infinite languages of Art history, particularly in Painting, to create constructed realities, which nevertheless, aim for a poetic sense of the transcendental.
Thus the aesthetic and philosophical histories of Expressionism, Symbolism, Romanticism, and the Renaissance in Painting are key influences in my work as is, more widely, Poetry and Literature. Ultimately, my Practice is a metaphysical search for some sense of the Human Condition.
