Personal Biography, Education and Selected Exhibitions

Nicki is a fine artist currently based in New Orleans. She was born and raised in Chicago, IL and began drawing at an early age. She studied art at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and later at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. In 1991, while at the Academy, she won the Frances Hook Scholarship Award and had the winning piece become part of the permanent collection of Citicorp. That same year she went to Poland for the summer and studied under Jerzy Wieczorek, Dean of the Lodz Film School. In Chicago, Nicki participated in several juried shows and sold her work in the Polish National Alliance exhibitions of 1993 and 1994. In 1997, on a sabbatical in Poland, she was commissioned to paint portraits of the clerical hierarchy of the parish of Gietrzwald, a major European pilgrimage site. Since moving to New Orleans in 1996, Nicki's work has moved from capturing the city's architecture in acrylics back to expressing her passion for portraiture and figurative work in oils.