Lisa Nankivil has established a national reputation for her dynamic abstract paintings. Working in the modernist tradition of American and European abstraction, Nankivil paints in a distinctive linear style that requires innumerable applications of contrasting and complementary color overlaid with multiple transparent glazes. Optical mixing heightens the visual effect of her canvases, inviting close inspection of the intricate interplay of form, color, and light. Formally and conceptually, Nankivil’s work explores the subtle ambiguities of pictorial space, while revealing the inherently subjective nature of perception.
Nankivil exhibits her paintings nationally and internationally, most recently in the solo exhibition Famously Private, presented at Traffic Zone Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in the group exhibition Dirty Dozen, held at Thomas McCormick Gallery in Chicago. Nankivil’s work was also featured in the recent traveling exhibition Out West: The Great American Landscape, which explored the dramatic physical landscape and diverse culture of America’s western states. Organized by the Meridian International Center, Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, this yearlong exhibition traveled throughout mainland China and was seen in several American venues.
Nankivil has been a Visiting Artist at Highpoint Editions, a nationally recognized collaborative workshop and fine print publisher located in Minneapolis, where she produced a series of original lithographs and screenprints. Her most recent print, Streaming, was released in November 2009.
Nankivil was awarded the prestigious Jerome Foundation Fellowship, which allowed her to travel to Italy, where she took the opportunity to visit nearly every Tintoretto painting in Venice. An exhibition of paintings she completed during her yearlong fellowship was presented at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Nankivil trained at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where she earned a BFA degree in painting. She currently serves as a Graduate Studies Mentor for the MFA Program at MCAD and has been active as a board member at the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art, a prominent artist cooperative located in the historic Minneapolis Warehouse District, where she maintains her principal painting studio.
