NICOLE STRASBURG
STATEMENT
With a minimalist approach to the landscape, my work interweaves naturalistic imagery and abstract sensibilities. My focus is design influenced by natural forms. Composing from drawings and photographs, my paintings develop by adding and subtracting elements, creating a refined statement about time, place and atmosphere.
ABOUT
Nicole was raised from a young age on the coast of California. Her family relocated from Salt Lake City, Utah to Santa Barbara in 1970. Santa Barbara is unique to California; its coastline runs East to West and is nestled between a transverse mountain range and the seashore. In addition, just off the coast sits a handful of islands that make up the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, protected both by our National Park system and the Nature Conservancy. These islands preserve a history of a long-ago California.
Residing in an area where the outdoors is as important as going inside greatly influences the direction of her creative life. Being outside is where Nicole seeks inspiration and nature is the axis from which all her creative pursuits stem, informing and influencing all her work. Visiting the shoreline, hiking in the mountains or day-tripping to the islands are all sources filling her creative well.
Nicole's process starts outside, absorbing nature through the act of wandering. In these moments she feels connected to something greater than herself. She returns to the studio to reinterpret these impressions through an autobiographical lens. Photographs taken in the field, prompt memories, memories influence the translation and active brushwork builds the fabric of the surfaces, reinterpreting the experience in nature. Fleeting moments gathered in the field get interwoven with the emotional remembrance of place which evolve into paintings exploring the sensory perception of land, sea, and sky.
During the recent pandemic, the outdoors offered great respite. We can all agree that the past few years have altered the way we see and experience the world, a noticeable change in our work patterns, a change in the way we socialize and changes in our emotional atmosphere.
In the long seclusion Nicole spent her time combing through old source material for inspiration. Re-examining photographs she tried to recall the “aha” moment that captured her attention. Looking more closely at these images she is reminded how much information the camera records versus what our eyes are capable of seeing. Nicole questions how this influences her work in the studio, the actual versus the recorded, the recorded versus the perceived, all woven into the personal dialog with her materials.
What she discovered, despite the uncertainty, was a deeper connection, solace comes to mind, a healing in the making of marks, growth after a long winter. The horizons in the painted landscapes beckon us forward, the passing clouds offer comfort and respite that the storm is moving on, leaving the glorious remains of being washed clean and full of hope.
In Weather Patterns, Strasburg explores the medium of gouache, an opaque watercolor, inspired by an exhibition of small paintings at a local museum. Primarily an oil painter and printmaker, Strasburg embraced gouache for its similarity to oil paints while reducing creative barriers in her process. She discovered a weather camera capturing images of California's Interstate 5 at the Grapevine, providing a constant source of inspiration through shifting light and seasonal changes. Using a single consistent scene as her foundation, she created over 100 paintings, experimenting with the medium while reflecting on the beauty of fleeting natural moments and her admiration for landscape painters who chase light.
