Meet Nicole Renee Ryan | Artist – Imagined Places & Misremembered Spaces

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nicole Renee Ryan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nicole Renee, what do you attribute your success to?
Interestingly and perhaps ironically, ignoring the business end of my art practice while I am painting, has actually been quite successful. The most wonderful thing for me in creating my artwork is that when I make work for me, meaning paintings that I do just because I find them interesting or challenging vs making work that I think will “sell,” these paintings seem to also be more popular. And in doing this, I am constantly experimenting, exploring and reinventing the landscapes I make. The imagined landscapes have become over time, more abstracted in a blocky colorful and minimal way. And I am so lucky that creating these weird little worlds also capture the imagination of my collectors.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I paint imagined places and misremembered spaces. At least, that’s what the paintings are of. Aesthetically, the landscapes are often colorful, almost impressionistic blocks of color that billow and bob around the landscape. The landscapes are playful, and the shapes feel like they are caught in mid-flight across the sky. While the end results of my work feel light and fancy free for the most part, creating them is anything but. I often don’t know where a painting is going to end up when I get started. I make very small decisions, one at a time, and these, over many layers, become the landscape. One of my most recent proud moments was my first museum solo show at the Westmoreland Museum of Art in February 2020. It was titled “Land of Little Thoughts and No Worries.” Getting to this point, having a museum show, was a long slow process of building my cv, developing my body of work, and applying and being rejected many many times. I have long ago embraced failure as part of my process. Failing to get a painting to do what I want it to do, failing to get a show that I applied for. In many of these cases, these failures lead to more interesting results, in the case of paintings, layers of color and shapes that bleed through creating halo like effects or atmospheric effects. So no, nothing has been easy, but I also am not sure I’d enjoy it as much if it was.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Let’s now pretend COVID isn’t a reality. We’d start at Phipps Botanical Gardens down in Pittsburgh, because it’s stunning. If this friend was into art, I’d take them to visit Boxheart Gallery in Pittsburgh since it is close to Phipps. I think we’d be starving by this point so I’d take them to Legume, a bistro type restaurant with delicious food. I think we’d head back to Mercer. Then before it was dark, I’d give them a tour of my vegetable garden because it is currently producing like crazy and I’d want to offload extra produce on them. Then probably a fire in my backyard with drinks. Maybe day 2 I could get them to help me with some home renovations? Because projects are what I really like to work on.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I have been really lucky in that my husband first encouraged me to quit my job to pursue art full time back in 2011/2012. It was a leap of faith as I had not been making any money from art at all when I started. At the end of the first year, we reevaluated and decided it was worth continuing. We don’t really go over this anymore because it is clear that this is my job, my calling and what I love to do. And still he helps me move artwork from exhibit to exhibit and I’d say about 1/3 of the house is currently related to art whether it is my oil studio, watercolor studio or supplies to ship art! I also want to make sure my mom knows that my favorite birthday gift she gave me was when I was around 7 and my cake was topped with art supplies, it was magical! When I was older she lent me very nice watercolor and oil supplies and instead of just saying “good job Nicole” she would push and prod when I’d ask for feedback – “What about the shading here? Draw everything you see!” I felt she got the perfect balance of encouragement and critical feedback from her.

Website: www.nicolereneeryan.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicole.renee.ryan/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolereneeryan

Image Credits
Portrait of Nicole – by Julia Reynolds of Monmade