Bio

Nicola graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) in Drawing and Painting in 1998. She has exhibited her work in a number of exhibitions throughout the UK and, following a career break to raise her children, has recently returned to her painting practice. Most recently, her work has been shown at the Royal Scottish Academy, Glasgow Art Club and Mall Galleries, including exhibitions with the The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW), the Pastel Society and the Paisley Art Institute.

Her practice engages with the landscapes of Scotland's West and North West coasts, shaped by a lifelong connection to these places and an ongoing interest in memory, presence and environmental change. Through walking and close observation, she works in response to the geology of remote mountains, islands and coastal edges, attending to their material presence and the shifting ways in which human beings relate to the natural world. Her paintings consider the multispecies histories held within these landscapes, and the traces of movement, time and inhabitation that extend beyond everyday human perception.

A central strand within her practice is the impact of climate change and human intervention on fragile ecosystems. Her work seeks to evoke the scale, atmosphere and physical force of these environments, alongside the sense of interdependence and exposure felt when immersed within them.