Rob Nicholls

Rob Nicholls, Ancient Dreams, 2024

Rob Nicholls, Tiers of the Midnight Sun, 2024

Rob Nicholls, Garden of Embers, 2024

Rob Nicholls, Fountain of Innocence, 2024

Introducing Rob Nicholls

Equinox Gallery is pleased to announce the representation of painter Rob Nicholls. Nicholls’ landscapes embody the transcendental effect of the natural world on the human psyche. Through textured brushstrokes, illuminated colours, and loose washes, his paintings are a synthesis of flora, fauna and geological forms that are charged with atmospheric conditions. These images emerge from his imagination and memories of a childhood surrounded by the lush vegetation of Vancouver Island.

His ethereal landscapes evoke visions of worlds that are beyond the physical and enter the realm of the subjective imagination. Expansive and kaleidoscopic, Nicholls’ works do not present a single spatial or temporal perspective; rather each of his environments offers multiple qualities of light, from the vibrant colours of dawn to the muted tones of dusk.

Technically, the paintings are created through a meticulous process of developing a specific palette that is renewed for each painting, maintaining an exceedingly smooth surface on his canvas that allows paint to flow freely, and building up spatial depth with the feathery strokes of colour from a wide-ranging and nuanced palette. While inspired by historical artists who have presented the natural world as a place of mystery and intrigue—from Jean-Honoré Fragonard to Charles Burchfield—Nicholls approaches painting through his own distinct and fluid language that explores the tensions between reality and imagination.

Rob Nicholls received his BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and his MFA from the University of Waterloo. He has participated in several exhibitions across Canada, including “Storm Island” as part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. Nicholls currently lives and works in Toronto.

For more details, please contact the gallery at info@equinoxgallery.com

Rob Nicholls, Source of the Rivers, 2023

Rob Nicholls, Bathers of the Yestersun, 2023

Rob Nicholls, Pavilion of Dreams, 2023

Rob Nicholls, Arcs of Sunrise, 2023

Rob Nicholls, Lunar Angels, 2022