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Inspired by the colors, shapes, lines and textures in nature, I enjoy developing layers of history within my work using paint and mark making. Each mark, scrape, and tear reveals the history and beauty underneath the surface. I enjoy finding hidden beauty in a landscape and employ abstraction to bring forth the essence of the scene. Using oil paint with cold wax medium in my paintings allows me to create many transparent and opaque layers which I can excavate into, thus revealing hidden treasures underneath.
It is my hope that the art I create brings the viewer into a closer looking experience and succeeds in expressing the beauty, intrigue and depth in the world around us. — Linda Nickell
Currently residing in Leawood, KS, Linda Nickell enjoys creating art in her home studio space.
She is a former manager of school programs at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and for many years enjoyed opening up the world of art to students of all ages through creative programming. She has a degree in art education and fine arts from Missouri State University. Previous to employment at the museum, Linda was an art educator in public and private schools as well as a graphic designer and illustrator for corporations in the Kansas City area.Linda has exhibited in solo and group shows in the Kansas City and Dallas areas with many of her works being held in private collections in a variety of cities
The central investigation of the show is betrayal as a repeating artifact of life.
It is manifest as safe passage that is homicidal,
refuge that is not accessible,
faith that is not requited,
accompanied by a chorale of heavenly bird voices.
The mockingbird on the sidewalk is a warning to us. We must all find St. Francis in our heart.
“Shibui”, a Japanese term meaning “understated elegance”.
Byzantine mosaics, Islamic tiles, Celtic knots, clouds drifting across the moon, storms passing through, shadows cast by trees, reflections of light on water, rhythmic, repetitive, shifting, and changing. Geometry and geological layers, fractals and Fibonacci proportions, tessellations and patterns, migrating birds and mandalas, golden sunrises, and pink sunsets.
I like to make order/organize accidental marks, whether working with paper or fabric. With no endpoint in mind, I trust intuition to guide me, what can I add, remove, embellish, to complete the composition?
Artist Statement
My work is an attempt to understand the world, what came before and what is happening in the present. I focus on the prevalence of and importance given to certain images which perpetuate harmful normative ideologies in the west. Certain images are given more value and are shown more than others. This fixation of ideals and purity that began in Western Europe was taken to new extremes in America. A false ideal was established, storing itself in images and symbols which reinforce a single and dominant experience. Who a person should be and what a person should look like relied on myth to carry what was never truth forward.
These limiting narratives have become the main characters of my work. As I examine what these characters mean and what ideologies they carry with them, I hold them up to my
life. The knight, angel, court jester, noble woman, and muscle man are the main characters I use in my work. Each speaks to hidden myths, larger ideologies that problematically exist inhibiting our movement forward. I challenge these images and the underlying power structures that have influenced my life.
Self-exploration and unknowing has become an important part of my life. My artistic process begins by drawing these characters over and over, spending time with them, trying to understand them. Agency, in an established world, is found by cutting up these drawings and reconstructing them to create a different story. Limitations of the past are cut apart and rearranged, challenging what once was, opening up space for something new.
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Bio
SK Reed (she/they) is an artist/curator/organizer/educator who was born in a small lake town just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. They are now in graduate school at the University of Kansas and live in Kansas City, KS. She runs AltU, an alternative space currently acting as a low-stakes book club. She has exhibited locally and across the United States.
