"From Tasmania to Chautauqua, high school dropout to acclaimed painter, Garry Nichols has truly found the meaning of carpe diem.

Recently awarded grants from the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and the Gottlieb Foundation, the Chautauqua School of Art faculty member is really starting to soar. Having spent 10 years in art school, three at the National School of Art in Australia and the remaining seven at the New York Studio School, Nichols has been in overdrive, as he would say.

In 1985, Nichols started to exhibit his work, which is characterized by intricate and symbolic portrayals of the landscape. Starting by drawing natural objects such as plants in close proximity in which he concentrates on details and negative space, Nichols uses his bank of images as a word glossary from which he communicates in his watercolor and oil paintings.

'They go from the drawings to watercolors, and they become essential ingredients for my large landscapes,' he explained.

For instance, Nichols, with charcoal, will draw a plant and then will transfer the image into watercolor form in order to expand it symbolically and refine it through simplification. The image is then used in an original manner in his painting of a universal landscape."

-Shantell Feeser, The Chautauquan Daily

"Both abstract and precisely documented, Nichols depicts tropical flowers and foliage, strongly influenced by Aboriginal culture and art. Nichols work has a linear quality and primitiveness which play off the abstract nature of each piece. The artist balances highly sexual and phallic shapes in a manner reminiscent of Mapplethorpe, transforming them back into detailed plant imagery."

-Samantha Nelson, WaterfrontWeek