Passion for colour, movement, and flow is expressed in each painting that Nikki creates.
Her creative expression and painting style first developed during live painting performances on stage to music. Drawing inspiration from the colours on her palette and the energy of the music and the audience, she painted her way through each set with complete abandon.
Since 2006, Nikki has been a full time artist based in Kelowna, BC. Her business has been built upon a foundation of pure love for creation, expression, and sharing it with others. Over the past years she has taken on a variety of commission projects, participated in multiple art exhibits across Canada and throughout BC, as well as worked closely with a variety of charity organizations all while focusing on her continued dream as an artist.
Her art ranges in a variety of sizes from large scale diptychs and triptychs to miniature works on watercolour paper and canvas. Her passion is large scale painting with miniature scale a close runner up. Painting small demands a different kind of attention, mini brushes, mini details, and fine marks - whereas large scale gives her more space to push her paint around and explore.
Landscape Art
Nikki’s love for detailed landscapes is a newer discovery for her. Growing up in the Okanagan, she has always been inspired by the beautiful environmental patterns that exist in this piece of paradise. One of her favourite pastimes is taking photos while hiking throughout the different seasons - she then uses some of these photos as a reference for her landscape paintings.
She begins with a blended out background, then builds upon it with outlines and shadows followed by adding shape and composition. When referencing the photo, she often turns it upside down so that it’s less about the scene and all about the shadows, highlights, shapes, and forms. One of her favourite parts is mixing colours to perfectly match the photo colour palette.
Compared to her abstract art, painting landscapes requires a different attention to detail that Nikki finds relaxing, fun, and always satisfying. For example, the challenge of capturing ripples in the water, the sunburst in the sky, or the shadow on the cliffside. It’s a constant learning curve (that is occasionally intimidating) to achieve the look she wants in something so familiar to us.
Nature is endless beauty, and each changing season inspires Nikki to come back to her easel and create something new - aiming to evoke a mood through her freedom of colour expression and unique painting style.
Abstract Art
Inside each of Nikki’s pieces of abstract art is an unplanned special moment. These pieces are feelings from places in her mind, places she has travelled to, and places she longs to see. Look and see if you can feel the crashing waves, the calm from a soft swept sky on a summer day, the mood of the sky after a storm, or the stillness looking out over the ocean beyond the horizon. Her abstract landscapes are like snapshots of the vast spaces she sees in her mind, a place to get lost in, a place to reflect... a place to feel deeply.
Rarely does she approach these pieces with a plan or limitation other than maybe the colours she wants to use, the rest comes to her in a state of flow. She will usually start with a colour and horizon location, then build off of her feelings and expression until it feels complete. Sometimes a piece is finished in a few hours and other times she revisits the same painting over many months.
She feels as if she is dancing on canvas with her brushes, adoring how the colours move and flow together before her with effortless ease. Switching between painting tools such as big wide brushes, wedges, and palette knives, she creates different textures and interest in her intuitive paintings.
Work With Me
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Home art showings are a great way to feel out and see how a piece of my art compliments your home. I offer them within the Kelowna, BC area.
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Customising a painting to suit a space is one of my favourite things to do. I would love to work with you on finding the perfect size and colour for your home. I've created a guide to commissioning a painting, make sure you check it out!
