nicki manthel

biography

Nicki Manthel is based on the Kapiti Coast and combines her busy painting practice with her role as Development Manager at City Gallery Wellington. She has worked as a painter for over 20 years. Her work has evolved over time—always reflecting a love of the natural world, a fascination for light and use of expressive paint.

Nicki graduated with a Degree in Fine Art from Elam, Auckland in 2004. Since then, she has worked as an art consultant and opened a shared studio and exhibition space in Auckland before moving to Melbourne in 2009. She continued to exhibit regularly in both group and solo shows in NZ and Australia, teaching contemporary art practice classes in Melbourne and managing a small Gallery in Prahran.

Known for her larger-than-life flowers and plants painted in oil on linen and silver leaf, Nicki’s work has taken a new direction thanks to lockdown and time to immerse herself in her work without deadlines and an audience. Still finding its source in the natural world, Nicki is exploring ways to express remembered landscapes and gardens she knows and loves.

Her work is enjoyed across the world from London to L.A. It has featured in many high-profile settings such as NZ House and Garden, on the set of Shortland Street and as a commission of over forty paintings for the Hilton Hotel Apartments, Kawarau, Queenstown.

artist statement

Remembered landscapes, old gardens, native bush and ancient forests, paths and waterways provide an unending source and starting point for my work. Currently I am engaged in expressing the essence of place and the emotions they arouse – flares of light, remembered colours, deep shadow, water pooling - as they abstract themselves in my mind and then through paint.

Gestural drawing with watery stains in acrylic paint on linen provide a platform for work in lush oil paint and being slower to dry, there’s time for thought and re-working. Risk taking is ok when you can scrape it off or paint over it the next day.

These paintings are the result of observation, memory and a desire to express my deep connection with nature - painting not only what I see and know, but how it makes me feel

@nvmanthel

havesomethingtosay - “Unruly nature – it calls me to pick up a brush and paint.”