Salvagers, 2022

Nicholas Kriefall  

I've had a passion for art since I was four and “helped" my mother with her final drawing when she was an art student. Looking at the bright yellow addition to her black and white charcoal figure, instead of scolding the act, she simply took the marker and led me to a blank sheet of paper. After that, whether it was drawing a doodle in a class notebook or the self-made comic books that filled my drawers, I couldn't stop creating. It wasn't until my later years of college that I learned I had an interest in painting. Slowly, I became more abstract as an artist, and my themes and palette changed before my eyes.

A native to the Midwest, I have always been drawn to nature, be it the sea that stemmed from childhood trips to the coast and a young introduction to snorkeling, or the rock formations out west during summer excursions. Along with learning about Hemingway through my father, his tale of an old man battling elements beyond him, and the fact that we know more about foreign worlds than our own, the encompassing truth and mystery of our planet's identity has ever fascinated me.

My current collection deals with the relationship between the key elements of nature, whether hostile or dependent, and the delicate balance of one's need for the other.  Using colors, shapes, and texture over multiple layers, I explore the comfort and animosity of a place revisited or newly imagined, continuously experimenting with visual depth, and incorporating a certain emotion as a map spills from mind to the canvas.