Alphabetical . 2005 . 2006 . 2007

Artist Bio

Niya Sisk

(Boulder, CO)

Painter

...her website

Bio in a nutshell: Niya’s works involve a strong element of narrative. And she is interested in paint as a sculptors’ medium. She paints with her hands and uses palette knives to move the color around. “I’ve come to appreciate texture as the webbing, the undertow of feeling in the painting.”

On color: “To me, color is this out of control magical world that charts its own course. I’m really just the one moving the paddles through the water and watching the beauty unfold.”

Showings: Niya has exhibited and sold her works throughout the United States and Europe since 1988. She has commissioned to homes and corporations, and thoroughly enjoys the process of producing works on commission.

"Diptych: Plenty of Fish" is the last in The Girl Series, a series about missing information in childhood that becomes shadows and longings as an adult. In each painting there are spaces and gaps that equal the weight of what’s missing. Whether it’s a canyon between the Girl and her ancestors, or her clothing that’s left on the ground near her dog who has passed on, or her posture standing at the axis of family and farm life, watching her shadow self have it all. What is clear is a world full of bold color and form but the puzzle not fitting together. –Until the last piece, which is about letting it all go to all possibility. This piece is: Plenty of Fish.

The story of how you first got artsy: Five years old. Just HAD to draw. And that has never changed.

Influences: Modern figurative. Bay Area Artists. Manuel Neri, Nathan Olivera, Diebenkorn.

Words for your fans? Just get on some funky or fancy clothes and paint! Or no clothes works too! The best advice I’ve ever gotten is “don’t be too precious about the paint.” I never know what I’m going to paint. I don’t draw first anymore. It’s the one place of total freedom…