KiKA Nigels Artist of the Month at SugarWood Gallery

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KiKA Nigels
KiKA Nigels

FARMINGTON – SugarWood Gallery welcomes KiKA Nigels as December’s Artist of the Month with an Open House Reception on Friday, Dec. 4 from 5 to 8 p.m. KiKA’s work will remain on exhibit and available for sale during the month of December.

Artist’s Statement:

“Creating meaningful abstract art.

“In the last couple of years I have finally started painting the way I have wanted to paint since I was a child. I remember going to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City with my dad and how he explained the abstract and modern artists there. It left a life-long impression and for decades I strove to paint abstract paintings that had meaning, life, and emotion, and not just pigment on a surface. I was able to depict and paint still lifes, landscapes, and portraits, but what I always found challenging was creating abstract art that had depth and purpose. After decades of artist angst, discussion, self-exploration, and then enlightenment, I started painting in the way that I had hoped to back when first visiting MoMA.

“I paint from an inner creative and inspirational energy, my experiences, reflection of what is going on in my environment, as well as what I smell, feel on my skin, hear, and taste in the air. I paint my mood, how the dampness feels on my skin, the smells around me, the feeling of a sandstorm on the beach. I interpret these experiences in my paintings.

“My hope is to create more than ‘beautiful pictures,’ I like to create images with a very personal perspective, added feeling, and emotion so that the viewer can sense something more and participate in the viewing of the painting. My goal is to create paintings that evoke emotion and personal involvement from the viewer. Every image I paint or develop has a part of me in it, reflects my state of mind, emotion, how I feel, how hurt or happy I am, and represents something very personal that I am experiencing at that moment.

“My interpretive landscapes and the paintings where I represent deep feeling and emotion, all come from somewhere deep within my being. Not just heart, soul, brain, but something indescribable as if the painting paints itself with some sort of inner and outer guide.

“The paintings that will be exhibited at Sugarwood Gallery during the month of December will depict my painting series called Horizons. Most of these painting are what I call ‘interpretive landscapes.’ Where some may be more representational and others more abstract, they all have in common that I am trying to capture the essence of place. Not just the physical part of being in a spot, but what it feels like and what emotions are evoked by the colors, smells, light, etc.

“I’m a studio painter, meaning that I paint mostly in my studio and not on sight, or plein air. However, I will spend much time in the field journaling, taking notes, and sketching to capture the moment. Often spending hours in one place absorbing what that feels like. I then return to the studio, that same day or days or weeks later and paint that moment as I recall it and all the senses that were aroused by that experience.

“I hope that by viewing these paintings you will be moved in some way that evokes a response.”

SugarWood Gallery is located at 248 Broadway in Farmington. Store hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

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