Nina Tichava

new gallery artist

[may 2010]

Nina Tichava skillfully interlaces influences of textile design, aspects of geometrical shapes and meticulously applied layers of her five colored palette to form the core of her current works.  In her hands, what could easily become chaos is instead carefully manicured so that the end results offer the viewer a sense of visual music with light oriental overtones. Painstakingly applied oil paint, ink, charcoal, and graphite along with copper and brass combine to create raised portions on her surfaces adding the right amount of physical dimension so that the play of light from the images further enhances the feeling of implied motion. 

Nina Tichava was raised in rural New Mexico and the Bay Area of San Francisco. The reflections of these dualities-from country to city, from pragmatist to artist, from nature to technology-are essential to and evident in her paintings. Tichava has garnered space at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, NM, as well as a grant from New York's Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2006.