'EMBODIED' BY TIFFANY NICKEL By Ray Manzari
by Ray Manzari Art by Tiffany Nickel
All of her paintings begin as sketches. From there, they get practice paintings, which she has just recently begun to sell. The pieces and stories that she feels most connected to get painted on large canvases.
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he first thing one notices about artist Tiffany Nickel is that she breathes creativity. From her BA in creative writing to her time as a pastry chef, Nickel is all about color, self-expression, and inspiration. Nickel has been painting since 2015 and working on her current collection using real, nude, female models since 2018. The Embodied collection centers around survivors of sexual or domestic abuse and seeks to bring life to their stories. She told OUT FRONT that she has more than 280 women sketched in her personal notebook. These models either pose for her live or send in pictures. When the project started, most of her models were Denveror Colorado-based. However, as her art began to gain popularity on social media, she has since painted women worldwide. 1 4 \\ A U G U S T 1 9 , 2 0 2 0
In contrast to the dark stories of abuse that come with each painted model, the art featured in the Embodied collection is strikingly colorful. “Color makes people feel emotions, and if there’s one thing I want to convey through these pieces, it’s emotion. Unfortunately, sometimes people can be afraid to feel, which is why, I think, sometimes my paintings don’t sell.” The bright and playful pallets used in the paintings make each piece impossible to ignore. Perhaps intentionally, since all too often, victims of sexual or domestic abuse are overlooked or underrepresented. Just in Denver, there have been 302 sexual assaults reported so far this year, an average of 45 per month, or 1.5 per day. Denver has also had 997 domestic violence crimes reported in 2020 so far, an average of 150 per month, or five per day. To say that there is an epidemic of sexual assault and violence on women would be an understatement. Each of the paintings in the Embodied collection is accompanied by a short blurb depicting the survivor’s account of abuse.
