Discover the Chaotic Still Life Paintings of Nicole James

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Website: nicolejames.nyc
Instagram: @nicolejames.nyc

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Nicole James (b.1987) is a Los Angeles-born, Brooklyn-based artist recognized for her chaotic still life paintings. Often focused on capturing fleeting moments, her practice explores the subversive potential of beauty in liminality and disorder. Her work has been shown at O’Flaherty’s and IRL in New York and is held in various private collections.

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Artist Statement

Nicole James is a Los Angeles-born, Brooklyn-based artist recognized for her chaotic still life paintings. James’s work rejects the notion that chaos and beauty are opposing forces and instead seeks to unite them, offering the idea that the raw and unfiltered beauty of disorder is exciting precisely because it is so fleeting and unpredictable.

Drawing jointly on storytelling skills developed in her career as an advertising creative director and a worldview shaped by being born into a generation that makes the ultra-personal public online, James’s work weaves detailed visual narratives that feel both unexpected and relatable. Large and vibrant, her acrylic paintings hijack aesthetic elements of modern photography, pop culture, and self-documentation to create totally novel compositions that invite the viewer to see the beauty in the madness of everyday life.

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