Nicki Heenan
Biography
Born in London and based in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, Nicki Heenan holds an MSc (Hons) from Auckland University, Aotearoa, New Zealand, studied classical painting in Sydney, Australia, and gained a postgraduate diploma in teaching cross-arts workshops from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2010. Her extensive teaching practice specialises in materials, their fabrication and uses within contemporary painting, both in the studio and en plein air.
Her work has featured in International Watercolour Magazine and Artists and Illustrators Magazine, and on Sky Landscape Artist of the Year. She has received recognition in the PleinAir Salon Competition and a Bronze Award at Art in the Open in 2022. She is an elected member of the Royal Watercolour Society of Wales and holds a Fellowship from Ballinglen Arts Foundation.
Artist Statement
Nicki Heenan RI is a landscape painter seeking to connect the viewer to the presence of the land through its granular nature and mineral composition. For her, constructing a painting is not simply an act of representation, but a combination of classical observation and physical substance.
Her practice explores the relationship between art and science, creating a sensory experience of place through materiality. Natural pigments and their interaction with different binders and substrates form an important part of her approach, allowing material and process to contribute to the experience of landscape.
By exploring the pictorial and geological processes that form the landscape, Heenan hopes to encourage a greater understanding of, and respect for, our place within it.