Nicole Wittenberg American, b. 1979

Nicole Wittenberg (born 1979) is an American artist based in New York City. She is a curator, professor, writer, and painter. Wittenberg’s paintings reveal intimate, meditative scenes from her surrounding world. First exploring her chosen site through loose, pastel compositions rendered en plein air, Wittenberg captures the sensations of her subject matter, then reimagines them on canvas, where a single composition often undergoes a series of transformations.

Wittenberg draws from the rich art historical traditions of painters who find inspiration in the natural world, employing precedents set by the Venetian school, Impressionists, Fauves, and American landscape painters, among others. Wittenberg has developed series of paintings dedicated to the various natural sceneries she has encountered, including the enigmatic landscapes of Maine, the apocalyptic sunsets during the height of California’s wildfires, and bodies of water like the Aegean and Caribbean Seas, and Pacific Ocean. Though her compositions are created from observation and life, Wittenberg privileges an emotional state, rendering her surroundings in brilliant colors and automatic, expressive mark making. The resulting creations are personal, unmediated glimpses of universal vistas.