Lisa Nankivil

Lisa Nankivil (born 1958, Minneapolis, Minn.) is a mid-career American painter and printmaker best known for her non-representational striped-format paintings. Nankivil works in the modernist tradition of European and American abstraction. Her paintings, while formally of a modern idiom, feature color schemes, brushwork, and techniques that are based on long-established painterly traditions. [Briggs, P: "Lisa Nankivil". McCormick Gallery, 2005.]

According to art historian William Peterson, [William Peterson is an art historian, critic, and editor. From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s he was the editor and publisher of Artspace magazine, a critical journal of contemporary art published in Albuquerque, New Mexico and later Los Angeles.] the striped format of Nankivil’s paintings evolved while she was concentrating on certain figure-ground relationships in her work. “I was searching for ways to make the background as essential as the image,” she says. “I began to explore qualities such as motion, ascendance, and hierarchy through painted stripes, and eventually the image fell away leaving me to navigate the implications of the vertical and the horizontal by painting only the orientations with stripes.” A phrase in the art writings of John Berger—“Home is where the vertical meets the horizontal”—helped her as she began to explore the physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of her discovery. “To me,” she says, “this phrase refers to a sense of spiritual well being: finding ground in which to prosper.” [Peterson, W: "Taizo Kuroda". Gerald Peters Gallery, 2007.]

Nankivil trained at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), where in 1995 she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting. Nankivil is a founding member of the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art, an artist cooperative established in 1995 in the historic Warehouse District of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Nankivil was awarded the Jerome Foundation Fellowship in 2004. ["MCAD/Jerome Foundation Fellowships." [http://www.mcad.edu/showPage.php?pageID=1226 Minneapolis College of Art and Design website] .]

Nankivil is represented in public and private collections throughout the United States, including the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; the William J. Clinton Foundation, New York and Little Rock, Arkansas; Northland Organic Foods, St. Paul, Minnesota; Harris Private Bank, Chicago; Winston & Strawn LLP, Chicago & New York; The Palazzo Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada; Rancho Encantado, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Gary Lee Partners, Chicago, New York, & San Francisco.

Notes

References

Albright, Audrey. [http://www.missoulaartmuseum.org/files/documents/exhibits/OutWestReview.pdf "Artists Capture the Great American West."] Review of "Out West: The Great American Landscape." [http://www.worldandi.com The World and I] , Online Edition, March 2007.

Briggs, Patricia. "Lisa Nankivil." In Lisa Nankivil: Betty & Veronica. Exh. cat. Chicago: Thomas McCormick Gallery, 2005.

Makholm, Kristin. "Lisa Nankivil." In 2005 Jerome Foundation Fellowship Exhibition. Minneapolis: Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 2005.

Ryan, Meg. "A Conversation with Artist Lisa Nankivil." Interview. Presstime (Fall-Winter 2008): 4-5, illus.

Scott, Amy. Out West: The Great American Landscape. Exh. cat. Washington, D.C.: Meridian International Center, in cooperation with the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 2007.

Peterson, William. Taizo Kuroda, Kumiko Namba, and Lisa Nankivil. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Gerald Peters Gallery, 2007.

External links

* [http://www.nankivil.com/ Lisa Nankivil official website: images, biography, exhibitions, press/publications]
* [http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=15100 Lisa Nankivil at MNartists.org]
* [http://www.thomasmccormick.com Lisa Nankivil at Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago]
* [http://www.gpgallery.com/works/search/167 Lisa Nankivil at Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, N.M.]
* [http://www.highpointprintmaking.org/editions/nankivil_lisa/index.html Lisa Nankivil at Highpoint Editions, Minneapolis]
* [http://afonline.artistsspace.org/searchresults.php?go2.x=0&go2.y=0&go2=go&media=&styles=&locations=&keyword=nankivil Lisa Nankivil at Artists Space, New York]