where the Home is art is

After an exciting musical career as part of Nashville rock band Those Darlins, Nikki Kvarnes relocated to London, where she

Reputation As A Talented Visual Artist

“I’d been a decorator before the band took off so it was nice to go back to that. For my day job I would just climb on top of insanely tall houses in Nashville and paint them. It was a great relief after years and years on the road, to just get up, go somewhere, work a physical job and come home and sleep in my own bed.”

A chance meeting with a south London gent in a bar after one of those shifts triggered a whirlwind romance that led Nikki to leave Nashville behind for a new life in London, and a decision to swap the plectrum for the paintbrush in earnest.

This commitment to art, and her experience of being part of vibrant art scenes in her own country played a big part in helping her settle in her new home and build a life here.

“It was a big move that I just jumped into, but I thought to myself, I’m an artist, I’ll pick myself up and just make it work. So when I got here I painted and painted... a lot.”

And the results were immediate. Nikki’s artistic style treads that difficult line of representing a subject in a recognisable way while also revealing so much more of them, and their personality, than any photograph ever could. Her use of light and shade to capture the essence of a person is compelling and beautifully and delicately rendered. It’s a mesmerising and intimate style that the big move to the Big Smoke played an important role in shaping.

“Once I moved to London all of a sudden I had access to these incredible paintings. Just to be able to go to the National Portrait Gallery was incredible. I’d go to any museum I could and study the paintings and see them in real life. And that made a huge impact on the intention of my painting – just seeing the paint in person and being able to see that oh, wow, there’s so much green in that face and that’s what makes it look like flesh.”

She also noticed a shift in her artistic approach as she began to solely focus on making visual rather than sonic art. “I feel like as a visual artist, I am very much a perfectionist, I’m just work, work, work, work, work.

Whereas with music I was like, ‘Hey, this guitar, it just plays itself.’ I never focused on being a great musician or a virtuoso.”

There was also a release in shifting to an entirely new medium in an entirely new continent. “It was overwhelming, but also liberating. To be able to kind of start a new life in a way, with a new identity and be like, ‘I am a painter now, I don’t have to be this character that people are used to seeing on stage anymore. She’s gone.’”

Settled in her new home and honing her new craft, Nikki started taking on commissions and building a portfolio of work – while exhibiting at the now sadly defunct 2 Girls’ Cafe in Peckham. Then, as if life hadn’t changed enough, she and her now husband started a family. Fast forward another couple of years, through days and nights of sketching at the kitchen table while keeping two small humans alive, and she’s turning her attention back to her craft and looking to build on the progress she’d already made before her children came along – now with the added motivation of doing it not just for herself, but to show her little ones the beauty of creating and living as an artist.

“There’s a time for everything you know. And that’s how I’m looking at my career right now as an artist. I feel like there is space again for it. I think it’s a great example for my children to also see me doing things that bring me joy and allow me to express myself. And for them to be able to grow up to be women who can express themselves creatively in whatever way they choose to.”

While obviously taking a pause to focus on family can pose its own challenges, Nikki embraces the growth it has provided for her as she begins to pick up her paintbrushes and pencils again. “Becoming a parent you become a different kind of artist, or a different kind of musician. With that shift I don’t know how you couldn’t, it’s going to have an effect no matter what. And I really feel it’s a positive one.”

The next step is to find her own studio space where she can draw and paint and most importantly, spend time with her subjects face to face. “I like spending time with the people that I’m doing portraits of, and kind of studying them,” she says. “You learn different things from experiencing their personality in the flesh, as opposed to just a photograph.”

And for Nikki a space within Catford would be ideal. “Just so I can be accessible to anyone locally,” she says. “There are so many families and young parents here. And I’m enjoying working with children and families, because that’s what I’m closest to right now. That’s my world. It feels very familiar and precious to me.”

In her spare time Nikki is a big fan of Catford’s Abbotshall community centre and Mountsfield Park –“Anywhere I can let the kids run around!” – as well as Nonki play cafe in Hither Green and the art and music scenes in Peckham and Nunhead, where she lived before moving to SE6. She is starting to introduce her children to music and art too.

“My eldest is getting to the point where I just give her a microphone and then I can play whatever I want on the guitar because she’s just getting on with being a star. It’s like, ‘I’ll just sit here and be your band and you do your thing, and that’s really fun.’”

So from taking to the road with rock duo Best Coast and recording kickass rock ’n’ roll in the south of America to capturing the people of south London on canvas, wood and paper, it’s been one hell of an adventure these last few years. How does she feel now as she pauses for a moment to reflect on where she’s ended up?

“It’s weird because when I first moved here, I felt like I knew it already, like I recognised things that I had never seen before. And I said to my husband, ‘I’ve had a dream about this’ or ‘I’ve been here before, I just know it’. So on a cosmic level I think I’ve ended up where I’m supposed to be. I’ve been to all the other parts of London, but nowhere else feels the same way to me.”

Where do obsessions begin? For me it was in 1998. A snooker fan since childhood, my hero had always been Jimmy “The Whirlwind” White, so when I read in his autobiography that White rated a man called Patsy Houlihan as one of the greatest snooker players he had ever seen I was immediately intrigued.

I’d never heard of Houlihan, let alone seen him play, but I would spend the next 25 years – on and off –trying to find out more about him. The result of these labours is my book The Natural: The Story of Patsy Houlihan, the Greatest Snooker Player You Never Saw

The first thing you need to know about Houlihan is that he was a Deptford lad through and through.

Born Patrick William Houlihan on 7 November 1929 at 31 Hawkins House on New King Street, he died 77 years and one day later less than half a mile away in a ground floor flat on Abinger Grove, having spent almost his entire existence living within a two or threemile radius of the place of his birth.

During his lifetime, Patsy was as much a part of the local topography as any of the area’s landmarks.

“You know the old saying,” said his daughter Patricia aka Patsy Girl, who collaborated with me on the book. “You can take the man out of Deptford, but you can’t take Deptford out of the man. Deptford was everything to him.”

What made Houlihan such a special snooker player? First and foremost it was the fact that – in stylistic terms –he was a forerunner to the likes of Alex Higgins, White and Ronnie O’Sullivan – in other words he potted balls, and he potted them hard and fast.

In the 1950s and 60s Houlihan acquired a huge following on the amateur snooker scene, winning seven London championships and the English Amateur Championship, his army of fans from Deptford following his exploits across the country.

At the time, professional snooker was moribund and a crowd-pleasing talent like Houlihan was just what the sport needed to resurrect it. However, Houlihan was prevented for many years from turning professional by the game’s backward-looking ruling body. Snooker was controlled by ageing stars