About
Art has always been part of my life
Nicole Schlegel was born into an artistic family of poets, musicians, painters, and woodcarvers.
Nicole’s curiosity leads her to explore and experiment. She constantly asks questions, learning new methods along the way.
She appreciates the support of her daughters, an artist and an architect, who always show her a new, deep and diverse view of her work.
Nicole studied jazz in New York: guitar, piano, vocals and improvisation. It was a very intense and enriching time, both musically and artistically. Paintings were found on the sheets of the lyrics she wrote. Eventually, however, the trees in Central Park were no longer enough for her and Nicole returned to Switzerland.
Keys, bits and bytes
Nicole’s work in a recording studio coincided with the exciting time when analogue was being replaced by digital. Her interest in technology was aroused. At a new computer-based company, she worked in IT, tuning machines, teaching, and taking responsibility for trading companies and their technical installations and infrastructure, where she learned programming and a lot about systems engineering. Nicole got into the depths of bits and bytes.
One evening, everything changed
On the way home in a car, the driver caused an accident. He drove into a tree.
Nicole then spent 7 years healing through meditation, self-healing, as well as doctors and therapists appointments. Once able to socialize again, she traveled, seeking inspiration. To heal herself as much as offer healing to others, Nicole recorded an album of relaxing and meditative music in Glastonbury, England. She held workshops on the effects of music, frequencies, and colors in England, Finland and Switzerland.
For Nicole, it is essential to share and receive knowledge at every opportunity, to create with the purpose of helping others feel good, to evoke well-being, joy and to invoke strength to exist plentifully in this world.
In January 2022, after 20 years of focusing on painting Nicole decided to go public with her paintings.
Artist Statement
I find my inspiration within me, through the core of my soul.
When I travel inside of me, I feel uplifted and feel the art flow through me and out of me.
I feel inspired by nature, but find it also within me. It is the many things I saw, the many things I experienced, the many things I have felt, that allow me to express myself, because I am the combination of all those things. I am part of nature.
When I work, astride inspiration, I feel my instincts and my intuition. I see what color loves another and what material wants to be with these colors. I concentrate on the moment and am aware of what wants to flow through me, what is calling out for existence. I hear what kind of materials want to be used and what emotions want to be expressed.
I work with pigments and with different oils such as poppy seed oil, sun-dried walnut oil, and linseed oil in different variations.I use casein, egg tempera, acrylic binder, and bookbinder’s glue with or without materials such as marble dust, swamp lime, plaster, etc. all on various types of canvases. Sometimes I also paint with ready-made oil or acrylic paints.