NINA TICHAVA
Dreaming of colors that won’t wash out (Botanical Series)
Title from: Thunder Jackson
“Dreaming of colors that won’t wash out” is from my ongoing Botanical Series, based on repeated organic forms, including Aspen and Majesty Palm leaves and Chinese Lantern plants. Employing multiple overlapping layers of painting, collage and printmaking techniques—many of which are obscured in the cumulative evolution of the finished piece—interweaved patterns coalesce into a lush composition suggesting bouquets, gardens or an imagined wilderness.
I am exploring the complicated intertwining of culture, technology and nature. Our environment and experiences are increasingly engineered, edited and filtered. Reproduction and repetition being central themes, my painting is a response to things mass-produced and processed to an ideal. This tension drives my exploration of color, surface and materiality. A prominent element of my work is the application of thousands of beads of paint, meticulously applied and used to create screens and patterns.
Acrylic, ink, charcoal, graphite, pen, paper collage and brass on panel, September 2021
Diptych, 60”h x 60”w x 2”d combined
Nina Tichava was raised in both rural northern New Mexico and the Bay Area in California. Her BFA is from the California College of Arts and Crafts. She lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tichava is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award Grant in 2007. Museum exhibitions include the Masur Museum (February 2022), New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts; Marin MOCA; University of Science and Arts Museum; Museum of the Red River; and Charles B. Goddard Center. Tichava’s densely layered, mixed-media paintings depict the overlap of nature and culture – what things look like to her and how they feel. A prominent element of her work is the application of thousands of beads of paint that create screens and patterns. She designates her works as imperfect and this is what continues to engage Tichava in her painting. Tichava is represented by K Contemporary, Gallery Mar, Laura Rathe Fine Art, Gallery Wild and George Billis Gallery. Her work is in numerous collections.
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