Stacy Nixon
Stacy’s award-winning work has been shown consistently in some of the region’s most noteworthy exhibitions and venues, has been recognized by multiple artists in residence programs throughout the country, and can be found in private collections and illustrated publications around the world.
She has a deep desire to illuminate the connections between the conscious mind and the unconscious landscape of possibility, with lots of beauty on the side. Connection to history, story, myth, and magic is always present, waiting to be discovered.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: I feel that to be successful in any business there needs to be a willingness to commit to all aspects of the vision. I would love to paint 90% of my time in the studio but that is often not the reality. Creative actions are always balanced by administrative actions. That being said when the Muse does visit- you listen!
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: I am currently inspired by Mimmo Palladino, his simplicity of form and color sense are timeless. Deloss McGraw is also a real inspiration, the looseness in his work and the naivety applied to deep subjects is so beautiful.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: The best advice I have received is “Ready, Shoot, Aim”, which at first seems mad. The idea is that you broadcast a wide net, see what makes a connection, and then narrow the focus.
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: I am looking forward to exhibiting at Art Santa Fe because it is my home town! Santa Fe is such a special place to be an artist and I look forward to connecting with even more wonderful people in the arts and art patrons at our event.
The Nick Haus
“I create because it allows me to live fully, it affords me a way to address unarticulated feelings and ideas. For me, painting becomes an intimate conversation with the canvas, brush, and paint. I prefer to paint with Acrylics, using movement and color to express the emotion and content of the work. I use fast strokes, allowing the brush and the emerging feeling of the composition to guide my progress. I approach works without preconceptions of structure but with a sense of something needing to be expressed. I think of my style as abstract expressionism, and although I have many influences, I think I’m most influenced by Freida Kahlo, and Jackson Pollock-probably more in their energy, need to create, and to regulate emotion through art rather than a specific style. Art has always been a crucial part of my life and continues to act as my sanctuary to cope with the painful trauma and remarkable beauty of life.
I hope all this is what my art communicates to others, and I hope to accomplish a greater interconnection to myself and an emotional connection with others thru my works. It feels bigger than me, and this nurtures my sense of being and my identity as a person and an artist.”
Those who love Abstract Art and bold colors would be great admirers of the works of Nick Haus. After all, she’s an Abstract Expressionist who grew up in West Texas influenced by the Marfa art scene.
But Nick Haus is more than just an artist who specializes in the creation of vibrant abstract paintings. The Nick Haus has been an art educator for the last 23 years.
Previously, she taught at a residential treatment center for at-risk youth from 2000-2020. She is currently working at a Classical Academy where she teaches art to K-8 grade. She has extensive experience in art education and working with students of various ages.
For her education, The Nick Haus studied at Sul Ross State University where she earned a BFA, MA specializing in Art.
Inevitably, The Nick Haus began focusing more on launching her career as a professional Artist in 2019. This journey started with experimenting with various mediums and subject matter, this is where she found herself continuously returning to abstract art. The Nick Haus found that through her abstract works, she was able to convey unarticulated feelings and ideas through her lines, color, and movement.
Since she launched her Art career, she has continued to paint and has worked on private commissions, and continues to take part in group exhibitions.
Vicki Todd
Hailing from Happy, Texas (the Town Without a Frown), Vicki Todd is a largely self-taught artist. Her fascination with art began in her Grandmother’s china shop and painting classes taught in her home attic. Todd’s Grandmother encouraged her to sit in during the classes and paint china pieces along with the adult students. At the age of 6, Todd announced that she wanted to be an artist during the question-and-answer portion of the Little Miss Happy beauty contest, which she participated in and won – a memory she recalls through her mother’s telling of the story. However, art became a part-time hobby pushed to life’s back burner.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: I call myself a memoir artist because whatever is happening in my life makes its way into my art. This practice began when I transitioned from a nonworking wife in a failing marriage, who lost a baby I knew I was not meant to conceive, into a university professor, after going back to school to earn a doctorate degree to teach public relations. During this tumultuous time, I began painting expressive female portraits to convey my feelings of anxiety, fear, hope, and determination. After teaching for 17 years, the call to pursue my love of art prompted me to resign from my tenured professor position at the age of 50 and focus on creating art full-time. This leap allowed me to write and perform a one-woman show called Shine Happy Shine!, for which I created 30 body print paintings and seven paper mache fairytale masks. I used the play format as an evolving art exhibit that urges viewers to follow their heart’s whispers, rather than society’s shouts of what is expected. In 2018, I took the plunge into clay and began sculpting female figures that include flowering vine motifs, which symbolize evolution, self-growth, and transformation. My hope is that my artwork in all its forms gives others joy, strength, and resilience, and inspires them to probe their own dreams.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: I took a class from Kristine Poole, a sculptor in Santa Fe, who transformed my practice as an emerging artist/sculptor. She taught the class how to build a female nude at 60 to 75 percent life-sized. Learning to sculpt larger figures has prompted me to not only increase the size of my work but also explore more challenging body postures and expressive hand and foot gestures. Seeing her uber-realistic nude figures in striking poses has helped me to think more expansively when crafting my own sculptures.
I recently viewed an exhibit by another Santa Fe sculptor, Clea Carlsen. The extreme detail that she hand-builds into her sculptures’ coiled hair and sometimes deconstructed body parts inspires me to push the limits of what flourishes can be successfully added to a sculpture.
I love the bold colors, magnitude, and immersive quality of Niki de Saint Phalle’s sculptures and installations, which is a possibility I would like to explore in the future.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: Two separate mentors told me: “Onward and upward!” and “Don’t look at the mountain. Focus on one rock at a time.” These sayings help me when preparing for a large exhibit, such as Art Santa Fe, but also on a daily basis when I might feel a little stuck and need to keep my art flowing forward.
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: After teaching public relations at the university level for 17 years, I evolved through the novice-proficient-expert scale. Upon quitting my tenured professor position, I once again became a floundering beginner trying to find my footing as an artist. Being accepted to exhibit at Art Santa Fe as an emerging artist in the SOLO Pavilion gives me a sense of validation that I am on the right track once again. I look forward to connecting with galleries and collectors and welcoming new open doors of opportunity through this dynamic art experience.
Victoria Veedell
“Places have a memory, a history, a feeling that we connect with. These memories, like faint echoes, are revealed as light moves across the landscape, transforming the color and texture of a place. It is these moments and experiences that I capture in my atmospheric landscape paintings.
My fascination with the landscape stems more from an interest in exploring our primal connection to the land rather than a focus purely on the aesthetics of a place. My paintings trace the effect light has on a location, how it leaves its mark on the landscape, and how it illuminates the essence of nature–creating different moods, transforming a scene, drawing us in, focusing our gaze, changing the temperature physically and emotionally, and capturing movement. Combined, these elements relay the feeling and memories of a place. My paintings are a snapshot of a particular moment in time. Recording these moments is an act of resistance documenting places that are threatened by increased urbanization and catastrophic climate change. They are a call to preserve these places and a reminder of the important symbiotic relationship that we have with nature.”
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: I have a very strong work ethic and take my practice seriously. I am a full time painter and keep regular 10-5 studio hours. This helps me stay focused and create the paintings I want to make. Travel is an important component in my work. I attend artist residencies regularly so that I can explore a place for an extended amount of time while being able to paint and record my experiences straight away. I am a prolific painter and feel like there always more to learn in painting. Nature supplies endless inspiration.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: Wolf Kahn, Joan Mitchell, and Richard Mayhew.
Victoria Veedell Golden Hour, oil on canvas, 20″ x 20″
landscape painting
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: Show up to your studio every day and make the work.
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: I’m looking forward to making new connections and nurturing new relationships. I want to share my paintings with a new audience of collectors, artists and art lovers.
Michele Thompson
Michele was born and raised in a rural canyon community in Orange County, CA, where she recognized her symbiotic relationship with the natural world and developed a fondness for artfully capturing her interactions with it. She demonstrated an interest in drawing and painting from a young age, developing her skills gradually. Although she was accepted into the fine arts degree program at Laguna College of Art and Design in California, and eventually attended Colorado Mountain College and Alaska Pacific University in Outdoor Recreation and Wilderness Therapy degree paths, she never attained a degree. Instead, when she wasn’t attempting to piece together an education, she was coping with the slow loss of her mother and eventually her father. Having spent her 20s experiencing the time-consuming tribulations of grief and attempting to find a purpose in the world, Michele is now devoted to her art practice as she seeks to use painting to deepen her understanding of life and death and demonstrate the commonalities of these collective experiences. She has participated in three international artist residencies which have allowed her to expand her understanding of the cultural and spiritual leverages between humanity and nature. Having lived in many U.S. states thus far, she currently resides in Arizona with her husband.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: In the last couple of years, I’ve let go of the pressures involving ‘my place in the world’ and have begun freely carving my own path. My philosophy is simply to be authentic. In remembering where I come from and holding on to the most important things in my life, I become more inspired to create. All of it has evolved into this beautiful cycle of inspiration, research, and creative production. I have found that the more inspired I am during a painting, the more enthusiastic buyers and other artists are about it. Genuine enthusiasm for my work is one of the greatest achievements I can attain. It validates my work and my life – And there is virtually no separation between the two.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: I’m foundationally inspired by French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, which brings many artists to mind, such as Berthe Morisot and Vincent Van Gogh. Art Nouveau and early 20th-century American Illustrations also interest me. Artists like J.C. Leyendecker who have styles involving intricate and specific mark-making, and painters like Monet and Renoir who mastered the art of capturing light in a scene, are currently influencing my work in significant ways. The historical contexts behind the art of the late 1800s – early 1900s are also plainly fascinating to me, as the Western world was exploding into modernity. The deeply evocative works of Kathe Kollwitz are an eternal source of inspiration as well.
I’m constantly learning about contemporary artists whose works and processes motivate me and provide stimulating insight. Some off the top of my head include Erika b Hess, Angela Chin, Mark Maggiori, and Pat de Groot.
The writers who have recently influenced my work include Mikhail Bulgakov, H.G. Wells, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gustav Flaubert, W.B. Yeats, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ernest Becker – Male writers providing a variety of perspectives on femininity and romance, sociopolitical criticisms and solutions, and historical and cultural insights.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: “Use more paint.” This changed my life. After I dropped out of art school, I clung to my rigid realist approach. This meant I was afraid to make changes to a painting after making a certain amount of progress on it. Many painters can probably relate to this: being early in my career, I didn’t have enough experience making mistakes, so I didn’t know how to fix them. Not being in school prevented me from receiving that much-needed third-party influence to teach me how to overcome this. I would preemptively apply less paint out of fear so that I could wipe it off and still have a clean surface for another try. During an artist residency in 2014, a mentor and friend told me to use more paint and began periodically painting on my canvases, which I found off-putting at the time, but I now realize how much that helped me. It messed with my palette, my ego, and my sense of what art even is. Now, I’m an Impasto painter and find so much enrichment in spreading around copious amounts of paint! Experimenting with texture and movement is essential to my process now.
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: It feels like I’ve been promoted. To present my work to industry professionals and collectors in this setting will be an incredibly valuable experience. The opportunity to have enriching discussions about art, not just about my own but about any art at the fair and about the industry in general, will be constructive no matter the outcome. Being around other artists stimulates my creativity and motivates me to learn. The feedback I receive will ultimately fuel my deep desire to be the best painter that I can be. I’m honored to have the opportunity!
Olayinka Kasali
“My sculptures are primarily made of clay, wood, fiberglass, and bronze, with humans and animal forms as the predominant subject matter. To give the idea more depth, I add elements like antique musical instruments, fossils, and everyday objects. My sources of inspiration are both current events and historic sculptures from West Africa. My sculptures are intended to communicate my spiritual revelations, African traditional ideas and values while educating through provocative thoughts.”
Olayinka Kasali is a creative and forward-thinking artist and teacher who creates paintings and sculptures that speak to the religious, social, and political cultures of people while also capturing their minds and emotions. He studied Fine Arts with a major in sculpture at the prestigious Yaba College of Technology, Lagos state, Nigeria. He also has a Postgraduate Diploma in Education, which allowed him to work as an art teacher in Nigerian schools. Olayinka decided to study special education for a master’s degree in New York City because he has a passion for kids and wants to utilize his work to inspire students with disabilities. A few people who are successful artists in their own right all around the world have been influenced and mentored by Olayinka. He has three solos to his credit and numerous group shows at home and abroad including “Turning Point; 2008, “Blossom; 2009”, Treasures of Creation; 2013, African Arts and Crafts Expo; 2013, New York Art Expo 2016, Contemporary Nigerian Arts Exhibition, Chicago; 2016, New York Art Expo 2022 etc. His works are housed in hundreds of private and corporate collections around the world.
In ancient African cultural traditions, art is used as objects of worship and symbols of royalty and nobility. I believe artwork should be aesthetically appealing and convey a message. This message should stem from intellectual, social, cultural to spiritual matters. This is the reason why my work is focused on exploring life issues, cultural and human spiritual well-being. As much as I pursue great aesthetic value in my art, I strive to make my works tend to man’s subconscious mind and essence of living. I am inspired by Pablo Picasso’s artistic lifestyle and a living legend; Michael Chukes who once told me: “You only have one life, don’t be afraid to live it! He went further to say: “Ask yourself how you want to be remembered, as the guy who played it safe and kept his job or the artist that took a leap of faith and created something that brings positive change to the world!”
As I made the decision to go into my art full time with grit and determination, facing and conquering any challenge that may arise like a bull faces a lion head-on and chases it away, Art Santa Fe will be my first solo show; a great propeller and launching pad into the limelight in the art world.
Billion Gallery is thrilled to share the success of its represented artists at Art Santa Fe 2023. Among them is the brilliant Mexican artist whose works have been displayed around the world. Our artists possess experience in painting, plastic arts, photography, and drawing, and each piece is carefully crafted with a perspective inspired by Mexico’s idiosyncrasy while incorporating global trends.
Our artists seek to express feelings through their art, going beyond aesthetics to provoke empathy with the viewer. The themes of their works are philosophies of life and feelings from a unique perspective, seeking to cause a spark in the eye of the person and transcend.
At Billion Gallery, we believe that art generates an incomparable feeling for each human being, motivating them to be and do their best every day. Therefore, everything that materializes in the hands of our artists is born from passion and purpose.
We draw inspiration from all great artists, whether in painting, sculpture, music, photography, or any type of art. We believe that each of them has something to contribute to us and their techniques.
Our philosophy is succinctly captured in the advice we’ve received: “The drop of water pierces the rock, not because of its strength, but because of its constancy.”
Exhibiting at Art Santa Fe 2023 means a lot to us. It is the result of many hours, months, and years of hard work behind this project. Exhibiting at one of the most important art fairs in the United States is a source of pride for us, and representing Mexico means everything.
We couldn’t be more proud of our roots and the entire team behind this that made it possible.
We invite all art lovers and collectors to experience the fresh and sophisticated works of our artists at Billion Gallery, the premier destination for contemporary art collectors.
