Nick Riesland is a Seattle based contemporary oil painter. His work has appeared in multiple galleries and business locations in and around Seattle over the past few years. Nick’s paintings have also been shown in Tacoma and San Francisco. Although art was not Nick’s first career, it always interested him. During his first career, he worked as a family doctor, most of it spent overseas as a Foreign Service Medical Officer for the State Department. In 2014 he retired and moved to Seattle where he enrolled in Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, spending three years in an atelier. He currently works out of studio space in Georgetown on 5th Ave S, not far from the north end of Boeing Field.

Nick finds the artist’s path compelling. He feels that painting is his one and only task, happily mandated for the remainder of his days. He suspects that what is driving him is an ancient urge seen among certain humans, judging by cave art and petroglyphs, dating back over 17,000 years. His method is simple to describe, difficult to execute: come up with an idea and then figure out how to render that idea using form, composition and color. He loves color.

Nick refers to his current body of work simply as “Trees.” He feels that his challenge in preparing for his role in the upcoming Yuan Ru Gallery exhibition, “Nature and the Contemporary Artist,” has been to take this time-honored subject, one that some might be tempted to see as boring and, through working the images, capture you, the viewer, in a pleasurable, if nuanced, way. Only you can decide if he succeeds in this quest.