NIKKI GARDNER

ARTIST BIO

Nikki is a Pacific Northwest contemporary realist oil painter, who seeks to capture the true beauty of her subjects.

While growing up, drawing was a pastime that allowed escape and joy. She drew her favorite animals, then eventually faces from magazines, and friends.
In college, Nikki became enamored with painting. Her professors varied in teaching style from classical art instruction, to modern, contemporary teaching that encouraged personal style and making bold moves.

Nikki’s art career paused when she had her children, but she longed for that connection to the art world, and that led to starting and running figure drawing groups and joining an art collective where for many years she curated art shows.

Inspiration for Nikki’s art comes in many forms, from figures to still life. But her series over the past several years comes from the pairing of animal skulls with nature, usually floral arrangements. She spends hours shooting photos and rearranging the subjects to create reference that has interesting shadows, glowing light, and reflective color play between the skulls and their environment. It’s important to her that the arrangements are beautiful to look at, hold the viewer’s interest, and have a story to tell.

Aside from painting, Nikki also owns a fine art school for youth. She has won awards for her teaching as well as her art and is heavily involved in her local art community where she co-founded and serves as president of a nonprofit for the arts.


ARTIST STATEMENT

I’ve been making art since I was a child but have focused primarily on painting for the last 30 years. My subject matter has varied, but figurative and still life have been my biggest loves over the span of my career.

This series depicting skulls and flora is as much about the study of light and shadow as it is about exploring life, death, aging and purpose.

My paintings showcase the luminescence in bone, flowers, and leaves, portraying what would usually be seen as a macabre subject matter as instead something elegant and beautiful.

With each new piece I learn more about painting, and about myself as each one becomes its own journey with its own challenges. Sometimes I have self-imposed challenges going into it, and other times the challenges present themselves during the process.

Coming from a background in figurative work, I am just as enraptured by painting the colors and light reflecting from dense bone or passing through the delicate thin parts of fragile skulls, as I have felt while painting the glow and transparencies of human skin.

Through exploring both, I have found likenesses in painting bone and flesh. They react to, absorb, and reflect light similarly. Although one is no longer living, it once supported and carried life.