B.C. artist makes Holyrood her new home ground

By Chad Feehan / Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

In 2021, visual artist Nicole Sleeth made the cross-country journey from Victoria, BC, all the way to Pouch Cove for a residency at the James Baird Gallery.
Originally apprehensive about the shift from the city life she was used to, she quickly settled in.
“I felt at peace,” said Sleeth. “I felt like I could actually focus on my work.”
After returning home to Victoria, she would go on to uproot entirely to make Holyrood her permanent home in 2022. The relocation serves as the inspiration for her newest project, funded by ArtsNL, of dreamy, figurative oil paintings, influenced by the artistic approach of magical realism.
“It reflects my queer feminist perspective as a former city person now living in a rural-ish location,” she said. “In creating art, we all kind of bring our histories and perspectives and experiences. And bringing that queer feminist experience and perspective to my work is important.”
As a previously established artist, her work has dealt with “society’s views of the female figure and the agency of the model and their role as subject,” using nude female forms as an exploration of power, connection, and lived experience.
Now she’s turning the gaze inward to dreamlike environments full of “uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox.”
Continuing to use nude forms, Sleeth aims to express the exploration of dreamy ambiguity with vibrant color themes and figures that may or may not adhere to anatomically correct positioning.
“By removing the realism approach of color it gives me a lot of freedom for selecting positions for the figures,” she said. “It gives me the freedom to choose the elements that I want to choose because they are important, not necessarily because they always make sense.”
Sleeth’s relatively recent presence on the island also affects the work.
“To me, as a newcomer, there’s a lot of otherworldly feelings to the landscape, and I find that to be very inspiring,” she said. “While I’m not copying that directly in the works, it is certainly informing this dreamlike setting.”
While there are certainly some definite themes being worked through and explored in Sleeth’s newest endeavor, she doesn’t want the works to have decided messages, conclusions, or strong social messages. Instead, they are meant to exist “as queer and feminist by default.”
Notions of paradox felt in the transition from city to rural coastline will be present in the work, like her feelings of safety in an exposed landscape with fewer social structures than she is accustomed to.
“I’ve been feeling safer, more emotionally in touch with myself, able to be more emotionally vulnerable in my work even though the elements are more exposed,” she said.
Painting is one of the ways Sleeth synthesizes and understands the world around her, and she hopes the work will connect with other people as she does so.
“This has just been a very stimulating time in resettling from one island to another, and it absolutely is about trying to make sense of it all and deepening my own connection with this area and with myself,” she said. “The more vulnerable and open and truthful one can be in their work, the more that will maybe connect with other people.”