Nicolette Spear grew up on a working farm in Otisfield Maine, population 179, where her father worked as a farrier. As a young girl she woke at 5am every morning before school to water and feed horses. When she got home from school she cleaned animal stalls, despite the cold Maine winters. Along with her sister, Young Nicolette carried large buckets of warm water to the troths to thaw their overnight freeze. She and her sister swung large mallets, breaking free ice that froze inside the buckets. Day in, day out, throughout her childhood these were her daily chores. Spear didn’t love the drafty, remote farm house she grew up in, but it is this osmosis of organic tactile repetition that was taken in.
Nicolette comes from a matriarchy of oil painters spanning over 100 years. Her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother are and were all oil painters of significant power and skill. She believes that this influence lives in her and is an inherent driver of not only her work, but her desire to catalog the time of her existence with paint. Spear is in love with the profound anatomy of biological organisms and the first thing she ever painted was an animal. Today she conjures stunning, bold imagery of humanity’s inherent conflict with nature and technology. She also paints directly onto the human form. Spear is an anatomical figure painter with an intense obsession of painting ephemeral and haunting mental images directly onto the human body. Even though body paint quickly fades, or is cleaned off, her works live on in all that have viewed them by creating a striking human experience. These paintings are made with the same degree of attention and accuracy as her anatomically detailed oil paintings. It is the dedication to the duality of the temporary and the permanent that defines her work.
Like her body paintings, all things in the natural world eventually fade away and Spear is not only focused on the natural world but how we as physical beings relate to that world. “The human body is the part of nature that we most directly relate to. Technology makes us feel we are separate from nature; however, ironically, anything we produce is natural because we as human beings are products of the natural. I find the human form to be the most fascinating part of our existence.
I find the human form to be the most fascinating part of our existence. Technology is a paradox that has pulled us away from ourselves. It also in many ways enhances our ability to create. I’m interested in that paradox. I find the human form to be the most fascinating part of our existence.
