Monica Cecilie Nilsen
Langesund, Telemark
Contemporary equine artist with a strong passion for horses. I paint and draw using various mediums. Proud member of Paard Verzameld Collective (Amsterdam).
MessageMonica Cecilie Nilsen lives in Langesund, a small coastal town in southern Norway. Here she has her studio and it is where her artistic journey started in summer of 2019.
In her youth she used to draw and loved to be with horses, being a horse groomer and also working at a trotting horse stable for years. As she got older and started family life, horses and art were left behind. Years later, after completing her bachelor’s degrees in ecology and nature conservation in 2015, she had got a taste for drawing again after completing some small botanical studies. Unfortunately, finding a job in the nature field was hard so she took a job as a survey-engineer instead.
The grief and frustration of having to settle with a lesser job sparked her to start drawing and painting with a strong purpose and to learn to draw realistically. After taking an art class in acrylic painting she was eager to try all kinds of mediums, and soon realized that solely drawing realistically bored her. She got bolder and looser in her style, drawing and painting every day and over and over again horses were her subjects. After sharing her art on Instagram, in September 2020 she was invited to be a part of Paard Verzameld Collective, a Gallery and a group of equine-artist from all over the world. From that time on she continued making equine art and has just started selling paintings in Norway and abroad.
She is now working on her body of work/series for her first solo show in her home town at Galleri PoP in Langesund in april 2022.
Statement
I tell horse stories. Using acrylic, charcoal, ink, pastels, pencil and mixed media, I create the noblest of creatures in a semi-abstract, contemporary style.
I see horses as strong and beautiful, yet I also see how they have suffered at the hands of man.
As I started this journey, I thought I’d only capture the beauty of the horse, their stunning presence. I see them and I think they are magnificent beings having a good time. But as I examen more of horses’ life and man in different settings, different sports and different cultures - more and more I see them as tools man use and exploit for his own wellness or ego. Horses are often looking stunning even if they suffer. I fight my own feelings as I want to free that horse. Keeping me sane is the advocates, rescuers fighting for them - humans who see them, hear them and speak up for them as they cannot speak for themselves.
For every horse I paint I think I understand something, but I am never certain, possibly because I am not as perceptive as I hope I´d be. Then again. I paint the horse through my eyes, striving to be a better observer this time, every time.
All arts shown are original and made by Monica Cecilie Nilsen. Copyrights belongs to me.
Telemark, Norway
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