A Tangled Coexistence

Nicole Irene Anderson’s tautly constructed drawings and paintings of atomized, flattened landscapes and desolate suburban streets are exquisite scenarios of unease. Deploying her accomplished formal language — exacting, deliberate, dry — Anderson composes essential works charged with feeling and moral complexity. Working from equal parts memory, observation, and invention, Anderson lays siege to our nerves with plausible realities haunted by anxiety and loneliness yet shimmering with the phenomenological glint-glare of light.

A native Californian, Anderson draws from the greed and violence of western expansion, the cool appraisal of our stewardship of land, our elaborate rationalizations and dependence for everything on somebody else, and her empathy for what land both offers and requires of us. Her scope for action is nourished by delicately nuanced drawing and the painter’s belief in the power of form. Weaving in and out of diverse perspectives like strategic lane changes, Anderson’s works explore the intersection of the specific and the abstract. Her itinerary lands the viewer in the immersive space of the world’s core, where the horizon is lost or abandoned, where the body stops, and reverie begins. Devoid of human presence, Anderson’s thinly brushed works implicate the spaces and elements beyond the limits of the scene itself, leaving you alone to speculate on transformation and presence, and to let memory speak.

Anderson’s works are a sharp commentary on the California dream and the banal, everyday nightmares that come hand in hand with it, – Tony Bravo for San Francisco Chronicle

For all inquiries, contact Johansson Projects at 510-444-9140  or info@johanssonprojects.com 

Nicole Irene Anderson (b. 1993, Cambria, CA, United States) earned a B.F.A. in Painting/Drawing from California College of the Arts in San Francisco and is a current M.F.A. candidate at the University of California, Davis. The artist has been featured in solo exhibitions at Johansson Projects (Oakland, CA) and the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (San Luis Obispo, CA) and has been included in group exhibitions at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art (Napa, CA), the Museum of Sonoma County (Santa Rosa, CA), and the David Brower Center (Berkeley, CA). Her work has also been featured in fair booths in FOG FOCUS at the FOG Design+Art fair (San Francisco, CA) and Untitled Miami Beach with Johansson Projects. Anderson has received grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and the Discovered: Emerging Visual Artist Grant from Creative Sonoma and is a recipient of the Mary Lou Osborn Award from the University of California, Davis. Her work has been documented in catalogs and featured in New American Paintings. Anderson is represented by Johansson Projects in Oakland, California. She currently lives in Santa Rosa and works in Davis, California.

CV

Working in oil, casein, graphite pencil, charcoal, and metalpoint, I create paintings and drawings that explore themes of land, home, climate change, and the psychological impact of the expansion of the American West. My work examines the culture and motivations that brought settlers in California to this moment through landscape painting. My work depicts a version of California as a land burdened by a violent and emotionally loaded history. I visit overlooked places that become visual metaphors for more significant societal and environmental concerns, making a case for empathy and care that should be practiced for the land that holds us.

Johansson Projects: Nicole Irene Anderson, A Tangled Coexistence | January 16, 2025 | Lisa Plachy for 7×7
[…] The artist creates fantastic scenes of scenic unease in richly colorful pieces haunted by loneliness yet shimmering with the sublime. Through exacting detail, Anderson critically appraises the greed and violence of western expansion and questions of what land both offers and requires.” LINK

“A Tangled Coexistence” is a sharp commentary on the California dream | November 8, 2024 by Tony Bravo for San Francisco Chronicle Datebook
Anderson’s works are a sharp commentary on the California dream and the banal, everyday nightmares that come hand in hand with it. LINK