Born in Santa Cruz California in 1974, Nicole Etienne grew up between redwood trees and suburban Silicon Valley. Her mother, an active artist, kept Nicole healthily covered in paint and dirt and nurtured her budding career with full access to her supply cabinet.

After moving to the Bay Area her family joined a liberal California utopian group which focused on human rights, anti-war activism, and the belief that by surrendering to a process of personal transformation they were to achieve a greater awareness of the earth and each other. Nicole was encouraged to be intuitive and explore.

It wasn't long before the conservative, buttoned-up world of Silicon Valley felt a little too parochial. She traveled widely, studying, painting and exhibiting, and in NYC Nicole was able to find her footing — and her voice. She has created work of sincere and tender human encounters. Painting lush groves with strong "angelic amazons" that blossom with sexuality and womanhood, she twists old myths with new, creating woman as the "romantic hero" in a world completely of her own.

Her technique copies the brightness of watercolor with the thickness of oil paint. A struggle between keeping the original marks of charcoal and the glow of the underpainting; and the desire to smear on thick hunks of paint until it melts together.

Nicole began her collegiate art education at UC Santa Barbara transferring to UC Santa Cruz where she received her BFA in 1997. She studied abroad at the Lorenzo Medici School of art in Italy and graduated with her MFA cum laude in 2009 from the New York Academy of Art.

She has painted and lived in Italy and Ireland and is currently living in Europe.

Photo taken at a pub in Waterville, Ireland

Etienne On Irish Landscapes
Most of my landscapes are of Ireland. I have been going to a residency for about ten years on the wild bluffs of county Kerry. I stay in an old, abandoned famine village where the presence of the people's struggle continue to be felt. Voices from the past and intense dreams disturb nights, which can leave me wondering if my hand is not alone on the canvas. Ancient standing stones and fairy rings are all around and the sea constantly crashes loudly on the cliffs. The ever changing sky and magnificent glimmer on the water draws me back year after year. It is such a powerful and magical place.

I paint some paintings in the open, and some in the studio. Battling the elements can be tricky when you paint on huge canvases. The winds can sail you over the cliff!

I love traditional landscapes but my impatience and my desire for mood over realism keeps me sane.  I start with a realistic painting then use a gigantic palette knife to scrape pigment over the surface, creating distance between the viewer, land and sky. This done over and over develops the image.

I also love a good story. I think that is why I travel to and paint in Ireland. When I was young my dad would read to my brother and me every night. We would always be in some faraway place, as I drifted off to sleep. A story can make the unbelievable true, the impossible possible. Paintings are like a page out of the book, you have no beginning or ending; you are thrust right into the center of a moment.