Cleaner

36x24"

oil on c​anvas​

2024

Profile Picture

30x30"

oil on mirror

2023

As​ the artist or with the Artist

54​x48"

oil on wo​od pan​e​l

2024

All At Once

36x36"

oil on canvas

2023

Nostalgi​a

30x30"

oil on canva​s

202​4​

Incredulity

48x36"

oil on canvas

2023

R​emembrance

48x24"

acrylic

2022

Bellyac​he(R)

60​x48"

oil on​ canva​s​

2024

get to know nicole

Nicole Toland is a Rochester, New York-based artist. She developed an interest in oil painting early in her career due to her fascination with the medium when looking at Dutch and Baroque portraiture. Toland’s work is heavily based on themes of mortality and themes of distortion and self-reflection. She uses self-portraits to understand fears of death and change while also experimenting with painting on non-conventional surfaces.

Artist Statment

I paint scenes that represent personal experiences in my life, such as dealing with insecurities, reflecting on the past, and the fear of what’s to come. In my earlier work, insecurities were a recurring theme in my self-portraits, as I had a fear of being perceived negatively by others. When I more recently found out about having a potentially life-threatening sarcoma, I began to become more aware of my own mortality, and since then my work has been an evolving narrative that deals with my fear of death and beginning to overcome it. One of the things that is most interesting to me is that as human beings, we can simultaneously be insecure about what our nose might look like while being simultaneously aware that we could die tomorrow, and that one of those thoughts can overshadow the other at any given time and then switch back again.

Juried Exhibitions

• 2023
• Perceive You 2
  
• Profile Picture (2023), oil on mirror, 30x30"
  
• SUNY Albany Student Art Exhibition (Best of SUNY)
  
• Entitled (2022), charcoal, 30x30"
  
• Disarray (2021), mixed media, 30x22"
• SUNY Brockport Annual Student Art Show
  
• Own Worst Critic (2023), plaster, 9x10x36"
  
• Remembrance (2022), acrylic, 48x22"
• Incredulity (2023), oil on canvas, 48x36"
• 2022
  
• SUNY Brockport Annual Student Art Show
  
• Disarray (2021), mixed media, 30x22"
  
• Disaster (2021), charcoal, 30x2"