Nicola Higgins Australia, b. 1975

Lives and works in SYDNEY, Australia

Nicola Higgins delves into the profound intricacies of the female figure, self-portraiture, and the interplay between the digital and physical realms. Her artistic journey is deeply personal, rooted in her intimate connection with her own body and identity. Higgins’ fascination with the female form is not merely an aesthetic choice, but an exploration of self—a way to connect with and understand her own existence within her body.

The act of painting, for Higgins, is an extension of her inner world, and a means to craft emotion into tangible form. Intricate, layered compositions serve as the foundation for her oil paintings. Higgins offers a seamless blend of reality and illusion, creating an introspective world. She represents women in the digital age, intrigued by the artificiality and illusion inherent in curating online personas, and questions the authenticity of our digital identities and the masks we wear online. 

Higgins deftly observes our very human tendency to curate and portray different versions of ourselves, embodying these personas as varied characters we subconsciously play. Through an intuitively feminine dialogue, Higgins draws on a personal fascination with the female form through an inherited appreciation of craft and dressmaking passed down from her mother. She uses various techniques to create her subjects, including digital manipulation to develop her female figures. To be naked is to be seen. She portrays the closeness of her subjects while hinting at the complex acts of disguise, curation, and reality distortion that lies behind the cultivation of our digital selves.