After barely graduating with her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2007, Niki Kriese moved to New York in search of fame, fortune, and falafel. She doesn’t remember anything before that. She makes art and lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and freaking adorable kids.

My work is abstract but derives structure from the gesture of bodies and the context of landscape. The bodies play within the contours of the painting edges, pushing against or swimming alongside. The figural imagery emerges, unplanned, through the painting process. It is an act of recognition and nurturing, both building and excavating as layers of paint and collage are applied and removed intuitively. It is also an activity of empathy. Having a body is a constant process of pushing forward and then repairing, and the awareness of one’s presence, of one’s realness, becomes more evident the longer we occupy it. It’s the experiential memory of this body, rather than the appearance, that informs the direction of these images. My presence in front of the work as maker is mirrored by the viewer’s, and echoes the shared fact of being human.

Exhibition:

Five Fragments