ARTIST STATEMENT
I moved to the East Coast by the sea. Every morning, I walk my dog, Josie, along the ocean, the weather greets us. I paint impressions of water, wind, and light: the curve of the cove, silver fish leaping, the shore, the sky, the arc of a cormorant diving.
The work captures the sensation of wind and light, the shifting experience of what I see on these walks. Sometimes the sea is the color of my mother’s eyes when she was angry or excited. I think of the heartbeat of the surf and repetition become ways of holding these changing impressions.
I make my own colors from materials gathered or found, carrot greens from the co-op, onion skins, madder root, marigold, cutch, walnut ink, and hibiscus. These plant-based dyes and handmade lake pigments are used as watercolor washes on cotton paper, spreading and pooling like water along the shore.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Niki Nolin, (New Bedford, MA), is an interdisciplinary artist. Her work blends painting, drawing and poetry with motion, interaction and assemblage. Working solo or collaboratively with artists and poets, her focus is to awaken the viewer to the spaces between spaces, words and images, including intuitive gaps and leaps of faith, and the associations of thought-play and choice. Individual and collaborative projects exhibited; Bristol Art Museum, Art Chicago, Womanmade Gallery, Art Prize, Chicago Cultural Center, IDMAA, International Calligraphy Organization, eNarrative Roundtable Boston, Chicago Sculpture International, Rockford Art Museum, Center on Halsted, Fideofest Tallin Estonia, IUN Art Gallery, The Poetic Justice League, SIGGRAPH and others.
© Niki Nolin