Love in the Time of Forest Fires, 2022

Niki Singleton   New & remarkable Artists

Niki Singleton is a Canadian painter, illustrator, and sculptor currently based in Vancouver CA. She has undertaken residencies at Lanchonete in Sao Paulo, Brazil, La General en Manufacture in Paris, France, Hotel Maria Kappel in the Netherlands and Triangle in Brooklyn, New York. She has had solo exhibitions at GALLERY for Spring/Break Art Show and at Undercurrent Projects in NYC, the Holocaust Museum in Dallas, TX and Imagine IC in Amsterdam, NLS. Singleton's work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Biennial, Chelsea Art Museum, White Box Gallery, Dixon Place, Bowery Poetry Club, Center For Performance Research, TSA Gallery, Underdonk Gallery, DAVID&SCHWEITZER Contemporary, Kustera Projects, The Knockdown Center, Studio 10, Norte Maar, Sideshow Gallery, Nurture Art, Brooklyn Fireproof Gallery, Triskelion Theater, and the AiOP Festival in Manhattan and Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in painting from the New York Studio School.

Singleton's painting practice is rooted in an interest in cultural histories and mythologies. She creates symbolic worlds with new or borrowed characters, objects and environments to find meaning in or make sense of current personal and societal predicaments we face. New narratives play out from old stories and can speak to our current dilemmas or celebrate the beauty of freedom, nature and love. Some of the themes in her work range from mythology, nature and specifically the ocean, human/animal hybrids, creatures and entities to queer or displaced peoples, artists and those on the fringes of society. The work often starts from a deeply personal place and then elevates into a global story. Singleton discovers most of her imagery within the process of making so as to retain an essence of creation and a raw emotion that can get lost with an overabundance of control. She regards the vibrant colour in her work as a clear influence of queer culture, whereas, the lyrical quality and movement within the paintings she attributes to an obsessive love of music; a constant influence while working. The finished pieces can contain an otherworldly feeling, unbridled emotion, dark humor, a biting or underlying commentary or an idea of what is precious.