Artists
Sara Nickleson
Sara Nickleson is a painter and curator who lives and works in Detroit, Michigan. In search of a departure from prevailing ideas around figuration, Nickleson imagines the body as impermanent, morphing and changing as a representation of complex human emotion and cognition. Rooted in her own longtime battle with depression—and significant reprieve through psychedelic therapy—the artist finds solace in world-building that draws from her studies in consciousness and melancholia, as well as theories around ‘deep adaptation’ in the face of climate crisis. Nickleson begins each painting by amassing a multitude of disparate elements to create her imagery through digital collage, a process she feels is representative of a human condition that is awkward, expansive, and fragmented.
After completing her BFA and BID, Nickleson spent over a decade as a museum curator and gallery director, and revived her studies in painting early in the pandemic. Currently, she is an MFA candidate at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (Painting ’24).
B. 1982 in Windsor, Canada; lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.
