Cailin Nicolich

Originally from the agricultural plains of Modesto, CA, my relocation to San Luis Obispo heavily informed my relationship with landscape. Struck by the undulating hills and jagged coastline of the Central Coast, the contrast from the Central Valley where I grew up was stark in comparison. In response, I began making paintings that focused on the connection between the landscapes that surround us, and those that exist in memory.

This led me to a deeper exploration of historical landscape painting and the conceptual and cultural contexts from which they emerged. I ask questions such as: How do our memories of a place connect to the history of a place? How do we recognize and process changes in the landscape over time? With the pressures of climate change looming over our future, my work confronts how landscape painting is situated within the Anthropocene.

Distortion becomes a tool to express my uncertainty about the future of our environment, in contrast to the perceived stability of the past. Through gestural marks, inventive color, and built-up textures, tension between the surface and the images mirror the flux between memory of a place and reality. This tension invites questions about how we perceive and interact with the world around us, what is real, what is fiction, and what might be slipping away.