Serena Nickson
New York, NYSerena Nickson is a New York-born and based artist currently focusing on oil portraits and hand-painted garments. Her parents in the arts themselves, Nickson’s upbringing was always focused on creative endeavors. Her father, renowned English painter Graham Nickson, can be seen in Serena’s characteristically stylized portraits. Her mother, chief curator of the Lehman Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dita Nickson; witnessed in Serena’s clear art historical references.
Through the classical works she was raised to appreciate, Nickson uses her paintings to investigate the complexities of the omnipresent “muse.” In conceptually focusing on this topic as separate from the male gaze and in investigating the female muse as she relates to women, Nickson separates them from a sexual standpoint, thus reimagining themes of gender, sexuality, and femininity through a contemporary, surrealist lens.
Nickson’s hand-painted textiles meanwhile look towards religious and spiritual iconography from the late 14th-mid-17th century.
Serena Nickson completed her undergraduate studies at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study where she concentrated on the Female Mind and Body in painting and poetry.
