Secret Wisdom Club

Nikki Nolan was born in Southern California in 1989. She adored drawing from a young age, but only began to pursue creative endeavors after moving to her mother’s home country of Ireland at age 17, where she completed a year-long art, craft & design course and had the green light for art school. Legal red tape caused a delay and in the meantime her plans changed. She moved to New Orleans — only to put down her dream of being an artist for 10 years (aside from being assigned chalkboard duty at whatever restaurant she worked at). Finding the time and inspiration to begin again during the pandemic, she started making watercolors of what she calls “Trash Bouquets” (a familiar New Orleans sight: overgrown tropical plants stuffed into residential trash cans that accidentally end up looking like flower arrangements). She soon started making paintings on canvas, remembering things she was taught years ago, realizing some of the rules should be ignored, and teaching herself as she went. Her paintings mostly consist of acrylic on canvas, painting from photos from her everyday life in New Orleans. She is inspired by the works of David Hockney, Hilary Pecis, and Max Seckel.

Nikki Nolan is an artist working primarily in acrylic and gouache. She makes slightly-skewed photorealistic still life paintings that observe her immediate environment, fixating on charming details, color-saturated light, shadows and reflections. She is drawn to spaces with inviting textures and color, like an intimate seating area or the sun setting on a stoop, usually omitting the figure but suggesting the human presence is not far. She lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana.