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Nicole Buckingham is a Baltimore artist who creates figuratively symbolic “puzzles”1, blending together her own imaginary world with a raw global human experience. She recently exhibited her work in Rendering a Narrative: Imagination and Allegory in the Gormley Gallery at The College of Notre Dame of Maryland. She is also the current gallery coordinator at the Community College of Baltimore County where she also teaches fundamental painting, drawing, curation and art appreciation courses.
Nicole’s artwork erupts from her own deeply personal experiences: the lingering fears, the hidden assumptions, the never-ending frustrations and broken promises. Her pieces have the unique capabilities of being both cryptically enigmatic and emotionally precise. She secretly exposes her own dark feelings and manages to tether the viewer through her own powerfully relatable imagery. Her gift is in storytelling, in exposing oneself, in unshrouding the secrets of our unsaid notions.
Her early works like Narcissus and Promote are both fascinating and haunting self portraits. In these pieces, Nicole purposely evokes the mystical imagery of Stefano Maderno’s Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia. The Catholic symbolism, however, is reworked or replaced with her own uniquely personal responses to life’s struggles. She is able to take that iconography and create a feeling within the viewer that transports them into that uneasy realm of doubt, failure and death. She understands those symbols of darkness very well. She is able to capture those emotions and project them outward, forming narratives that can strike a deep chord within anyone.
The idea of telling an emotionally revealing story carries over into the kind of artwork that effects Nicole. She is captivated by pieces that can immerse the viewer’s mind in the personal stories of the artist. She needs to feel connected to their tragedies and experience the uniqueness of their individual history. It is easy for her to appreciate pieces that open their selves up, that act as visual gateways into the internal workings of the artist’s mind.
There needs to be that peeling away of the artist’s humanity: the revealing glances, the unspoken messages, the hidden symbolism. For her, the most powerful artworks are those that blur the line between the artist’s reality and that of the viewer. There needs to be that fusing, that merging, that reflection of oneself in the story of another.
This idea of personal relatability, first made itself clear to Nicole when she neared the completion of her M.F.A at the Savannah College of Art and Design. During a break, she had gone home with the feelings of frustration, of not-good-enough, of an invisible suffocation. Those feelings bored their selves away inside of her. She was at a loss of what do, what to speak, how to release that personal turmoil.
Then, she was reminded of Maderno’s sculpture, the Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia from the Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. It had left such an emotional impact on her mind’s eye that she felt compelled to relate her own experiences with that of the veiled martyr. Nicole understood the Catholic imagery, of accepting one’s fate, one’s never-ending perils. She was so moved by the broad connectivity of the piece that it changed her perception of artwork forever. It spoke to her through invisible forces that allowed her to tether herself to its tragedy.
That is what sparked Nicole’s haunting creations of 2005-2006. The wrapped heads, the contorted bodies, the physical restrainment, all at once came to life with that realization. She felt so connected to that Maderno piece because of the ability of storytelling. Saint Cecilia was all at once summarized in that piece of stone and connected with Nicole because of that relatable component.
She understands that people needed to feel something deep, something passionate, something guttural and raw. For Nicole, artwork is about taking those feelings that we keep caged within ourselves and making it relatable through the universal connections of human emotions and experiences. People need to see their selves in the artwork to be moved by it and become enveloped in the artist’s personal story.
Nicole Buckingham’s entire viewpoint of artwork revolves around that central idea of utilizing established and relatable imagery to captivate the viewer and draw them into the visual story. A successful Artists needs to form that unspoken bond with the viewer. Through those secret thoughts, those hidden vulnerabilities, reflecting and tying, the common human experience needs to be woven into the artwork to create that personal impact.
Tags: art, baker artist awards, Baltimore, Buckingham, ccbc, Drawing, interview, Nicole Buckingham, Painting, Pencil, radar redux, Realism, Self-portrait, Tyler Farinholt, visual art
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