Nicole Aponte paintings in the SF campus's Simpson Library

Three of MFA Candidate NICOLE APONTE's large-scale paintings are on view in the Simpson Library from January 19 - February 19, 2016. In the nearby display cases a selection of art books reveal key inspirations for Nicole's work. One of the painters whose work she refers to is the painter Mary Weatherford, of whom she writes Weatherford’s recent work introduces bright neon lights into her paintings as a way to ground her work in everyday narratives. For example, Wonder Wheel references her experience of Los Angeles, electricity, and the exhilaration one might feel experiencing the city. The lights indicate a bridge between memory and place, and particularly “the moments where these two combine into lived and imagined experiences.”* My paintings exist in this moment as well, in that they are a collection of my thoughts on fitting in and experiences with putting myself out there, with finding a home and creating one, with adapting and accepting change, and with understanding that all the places I have lived are embedded in my memory, in my being, and in my choices."

- Excerpt from Nicole Aponte’s Dear Painting

* Tuck, Geoff. “Mary Weatherford, Bakersfield Paintings.” Notes on Looking: Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. November 3, 2012.