Nick Jensen (b.1984) received his BA in Fine Art from Central St Martins in 2007, and his MFA from the Chelsea School of Art and Design in 2010. Jensen’s practice is rooted in perception; how we interpret, filter, and reframe the world around us. He draws his subjects from his imagination and an amalgam of found and subtly taken phone images. Using watercolour, he works these quotidian scenes into dynamic, often dissonant, compositions. Beneath the surface of their ostensible beauty, the paintings elicit a sense of unease. Jensen’s characters, rendered with loose, painterly strokes and layered markings, approach and then transgress thresholds in space.

For his first solo exhibition with Paul Smith, Driftwood dragon, Jensen presents a series of paintings inspired by Gareth E. Rees's 2013 book Marshland, in which Rees describes a makeshift dragon constructed from driftwood and paper. This image resonated deeply with Jensen, whose connection to the marshlands and the River Lea is best understood as psychogeographic. The locality, with its layered histories and lingering sense of mystery, has become both subject and collaborator in this new body of work: a terrain where memory, myth, and the everyday converge.

Jensen’s work has been exhibited internationally at the Duarte Sequeira Gallery in Seoul, Korea (2024) galeriepcp in Paris, France (2024), and Kristin Hjellegjerde, Berlin, Germany (2022). He has participated in solo exhibitions at the Union Gallery in London (2023, 2021); Parlour Gallery, London (2018); Twelve Around One, London (2012), and selected group exhibitions, including The New York Life Gallery, New York (2025), Fores Project, London, (2024) and the JARILAGER Gallery, Cologne, Germany (2022).