Meant to elicit quick, intuitive responses, Short Answer Sunday will introduce readers to a wide variety of artists, educators, writers, curators, art enthusiasts and art adjacent individuals whose inclinations I admire. With the intent of getting to know the person behind the artwork as well generating new avenues to artistic discovery, participants may respond with only a few words or an artist’s name, always with the opportunity to elaborate if they wish!
Nikki Painter is a good friend and an artist whose work & practice I absolutely revere. She also happens to be one of my Art Habit blogging co-conspirators and the instigator of our artist support group (every artist should really have one of these btw), so I’m especially excited to feature her here for a Short Answer Sunday.
Ranging in scale from intimate to immersive, Nikki’s work takes the form of drawing, painting, collage and sculptural installation. In her recent work, she creates invented environments that feature the garden as subject. In conjunction with a deep investigation into pattern and color, Nikki’s gardens are dynamic, emotive and optical. Deceptive from a distance (from afar elements of her drawings may appear printed), a close inspection reveals that the graphic patterns and imagery are laboriously drawn, cut out and layered by hand. Nikki and I share a love of working on and with paper, as both a surface and also for its sculptural capacities.
I’ve just returned to the US from Berlin and remain in that strange liminal (sorry, usually I try to avoid this word due to art-speak overuse, but in this case it really is the best choice) headspace when one has just traveled from one place to another. I’m seeing evidence of my time there everywhere, from my sunburnt toes to the leek scape in my garden that resembles the TV Tower. Although I’m most definitely influenced by recent experiences, I don’t think it’s off base to say that Nikki’s work evokes a Berlin-in-springtime aesthetic, especially with the interplay of floral forms, grids and stripes that recall the city’s symbiosis of wild, resilient flora next to the rectilinear grid of the plattenbau and other urban structures. Nikki’s botanicals remind me there’s little I love more in a city than vigorous weedy blooms that sprout upwards from cracks in the sidewalk. When looking at Nikki’s work, I’m also reminded of the garden as sanctuary, its regimen an incantation for hope during times of great difficulty (highly recommend checking out Kenneth Helphand’s book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime).
Once again, I just want to voice how exciting it is for me that this interview process allows for so much discovery in spite of being a relatively casual thing. I can know someone well and still learn new things about their interests (seriously, every time I open up a new Google form response, it feels like my birthday). I loved Nikki’s Short Answer Sunday and I know that you will, too. For more about Nikki and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram (and make a plan to go see her upcoming solo show at Foyer in November)!
xo, Lauren
Name: Nikki Painter
Occupation: artist
Astrological data: Privileged info
Hometown: Roanoke, VA
Current location: Richmond, VA
Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?
Listening to podcasts, reading art magazines/publications
An artwork that makes you laugh?
work by Red Grooms
An artist whose work you can’t stop thinking about?
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Image Source |
What’s your favorite characteristic in an artwork?
surprise, humor, absurdity, beauty
Erotic artwork? (Ed. note: this is a multiple choice question)
Yes: ✅
What’s an artwork that you secretly hate?
There is a sculpture at VMFA that I have a love/hate relationship with. Whenever I think of it, my first reaction is “Ugh, ew,” but then I also immediately think “Oh, I hope that thing is on view the next time I am there, I really want to see it again!” I can’t remember the artist right now, but it is a head, and it is very late ‘70s/’80s.
Most insane art piece?
Gregory Barsamian sculptures
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Fav monograph or art book?
Currently: “With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art”
Fav museum or gallery in your current location?
An artwork that you’d like to see before you die?
a comprehensive Louise Nevelson retrospective
What’s a book that changed your life?
An M.C. Escher book a teacher showed me when I was in fourth grade
❤
Nikki Painter is a Virginia artist whose mixed-media works are inspired by the natural world. She has had solo shows at Second Street Gallery, Shockoe Artspace, COOP Gallery, and Purdue University's Rueff Gallery, among others. Her work has been part of numerous group exhibitions, including shows at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, the Taubman Museum, and the Daegu Arts Center in South Korea. Painter has attended artist residencies in Virginia, Vermont, Wyoming, Georgia, and Florida. Her work is part of many private collections and public collections including those of: Notre Dame of Maryland University, Capital One, and the Katzen Museum. In 2022, she was awarded a Fellowship for Works on Paper by the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She resides in suburban Richmond with her husband and a growing collection of houseplants.
Find out more about Nikki on her website and on Instagram.
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