Nicholas was a landscape painter for more than a decade, working and exhibiting mainly on Nantucket Island, where she also served on the Board of Directors of the Artists Association.
She began experimenting with abstract painting several years ago, although her work continues to draw from the natural world. She now paints in the Hudson Valley, and its colors and forms find their way into her paintings. Nicholas appreciates, studies and is inspired by a wide range of abstract painters, including Archile Gorky, William De Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Sam Gilliam, Cecily Brown and Amy Sillman.
Nicholas finds abstract painting to be a challenging, trial and error, intuitive, often mysterious process. As another inspiring painter, Richard Diebenkorn, described it, “I don’t go into the studio with the idea of something. I face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that sort of start me on some kind of dialogue….”
Work can be found at the following galleries:
www.nantucketarts.org
www.greyladygallery.com