"The perception of a prevailing feeling is something that really drives my work," Nicole Wittenberg tells Artspace. She’s talking from her studio in Maine, a former US Government factory for listening devices that the San Francisco-born, New York-based artist has repurposed as an artistic sanctuary and, increasingly, a home from home.
"I'm really interested in feelings, and sensations - that first impression, things that happened by chance and the way we connect with that chance. And while that stuff exists in the city, it's easier to fall into a rhythm with it in the country," she says.
Drawing from her practice of working en plein air, her new Monacelli, Phaidon, and Artspace silkscreen edition Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace, 2025 depicts flourishing golden blossoms against a velvety navy background. Wittenberg’s layered strokes and gestural mark-making convey a sense of immediacy and corporeal presence, evoking the pleasure of being among blooms in nature. There’s a sensual quality that’s inherent to all her work.
The painter, print maker and photographer David Salle is just one of many fellow artists who have praised Wittenberg’s commitment to reinventing realism. "People think everything's been done, but that's not true. Wittenberg dares herself to do precisely that which scares her," he has said.
Each of the 30 limited edition prints is accompanied by a signed copy of the artist’s highly anticipated debut monograph published by Monacelli, offering a fresh perspective on the artist’s career to date. Goldenrod and Queen Anne's Lace, 2025 is a 15-color silkscreen on Saunders Waterford 425 gsm paper, signed and numbered on recto. It measures 11 x 8.5 inches and is available for $1,750.
The release of Wittenberg’s new edition and monograph coincides with three solo exhibitions of the artist’s work this summer at Maison La Roche, Par, FR through July 19; Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Maine through July 20; and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art through September 14, 2025.
Wittenberg’s works are included in many prominent collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Albertina, Vienna, Austria; Portland Museum of Art, ME, USA; the Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA; Aishti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon; and others.
On the eve of its release, we spoke to Nicole Wittenberg about the new edition and her wider practice.
NICOLE WITTENBERG - Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace, 2025
Photography Garrett Carroll
Where you are looks positively idyllic! How does the studio and its surroundings impact on the work or make its presence known? Well, it's interesting. I started coming to Maine in2012. I was in a group show at the Colby College Museum, a liberal arts school with a museum. There's a large wing full of fantastic Alex Katz paintings there. And he had curated a show with a bunch of new artists, and I was a part of that show. I came up here for the first time for three days with two friends who aren't artists, but we looked around and we just thought this is nice. And it felt really far away from New York. And it also felt really far away from the places people who live in New York go to get out of New York, which are suburbs now and a little bit depressing.
I've always found suburbia depressing. The Hamptons and upstate New York - it’s just become a very bourgeois scene. And Maine didn't have that. I was working at the time for an English artist named Anthony McCall, who did light work. He's just had a big show at the Tate Modern. I worked for him for 16 years. I installed all those shows for many years for him. And I traveled a lot while I was doing that. And so, it started out with a long weekend and then the next year I was here for a week. In 2017, I stopped working for Anthony, but I would still be up here for a month-and-a-half, just as a place to come and really leave the city and almost kind of throw your phone in the pond and walk away from it all.
It's rural. There's a lot of farming. It's far away. But there's a grim reality because, on one hand, you need to know what's going on in the time you live, but on the other hand, how you feel about yourself or about history, might be even more important than knowing what the cool thing is at any given time.
Yeah, because it's the one thing that only you have, isn't it? That's a beautiful way to put it. And at the end of the day, who the hell wants to make a parody of someone else's shit? I don't want to. No one wants to do that, but it's an easy thing to fall into when you're in the city and you're going to shows all the time and then coming back to the studio and trying to find a way to drown all of that out to find your own voice. I think coming here, leaving the city, and being in a place like this, in a way it can be traumatic, because it feels the world is falling away from you - and the things I hold on to for community and support.
I don't really know when I make something if it's any good necessarily, or if it makes sense. And so having community as an artist feels so important because people can help you make sense of what you've made. But coming out here and making things that may or may not make sense, and not actually knowing if they do, might actually be better for me. So, I'm still in the city a lot but this is new for me.
NICOLE WITTENBERG - Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace, 2025
Photography Garrett Carroll
Your surroundings have obviously influenced the new edition you’ve created; can you tell us a little about that? Maine has a very short growth season, but a very vibrant growth season. It’s very fertile here and, week to week, the kinds of plants that are growing change dramatically. These flowers are all wildflowers. So, they all feel like discoveries, and they usually tend to happen on long walks. I like to walk. I don't like to go too fast.
Queen Anne's Lace and Goldenrod just grow naturally along the seashore. They're fuzzy, floating, they reflect light and absorb light at the same time, and they're shaking a bit, and they're white, but they're not white. They're almost opals with these red beads of blood in the middle. And, in a way, when I'm looking at them, they almost feel like moving jewelry.
And they have a little topography. They have hills and valleys, and then the Golden Rod is very different. It has these spikes that radiate out with these articulated little swords coming out of them.
What do you see when you come across these flowers? I almost see fireworks, an explosive moment. And then I just take a weird color, orange, or something, and I just draw fireworks. I'm not even looking at the page. Sometimes my eyes are closed and I'm just remembering where things are. I have a very abstract image in front of me. Then I start looking at the thing again and putting little pieces of those moments into that abstraction. And then, through that process, a form starts to appear. It's not really a premeditated thing.
Do you paint them outside or from memory inside? Outside. I spend 15 or 20 minutes with them, usually in a ridiculously uncomfortable position. All parts of my body are falling asleep, but I'm not even in my body, so I wouldn't know about it. And then I come to and I can't stand up. The image that we’re using for this print is a study and it was made in a different way. It was very quick.
It was pastel, wasn't it? Yes. Not oil pastel, chalk pastel. And that was created maybe not this last summer, but the summer before, but I'm not 100% sure. The dates bleed together for me.
NICOLE WITTENBERG - Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace, 2025
Photography Garrett Carroll
What do you remember about making this work? It was a very special moment. The Golden Rod was something I had been drawing, and I was making some paintings with it, and then suddenly, two or three days later, the Queen Anne's Lace grew in. And it happened almost overnight. It had just changed dramatically. And so I was thinking, this is a spectacular moment. Here are these two very different forms, interacting together in a strange way. And I thought I must do this.
Did you pick a certain time of day to go back? Because the flowers are so bright, I wanted a sideways light. I wanted the raking light. So, I either needed the sun coming up or the sun going down. Rather than being illuminated from the top down, I wanted a side illumination that allowed for things to come in and out a little bit. And since I do wake up early, but I'm not organised early in my mind to get my things together and run to a place, it ended up being at around 4pm.
And did you get in close and try and be at one with it? No, I just kind of sit down in front of it and look at it and just make an abstract drawing, with just one color on a sheet of paper. Then I start to drop in certain moments and try to come to terms with the fact that, OK, it looked this way when I started, and now it looks this way. I try to pick up moments of that changing light, or that changing form, because the wind comes and just pushes everything about, and you can get a little bit of a feeling there without fully expressing what it is, without describing what it is.
NICOLE WITTENBERG - Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace, 2025
Photography Garrett Carroll
What do flowers signify for you as in artist and in the broader scope of your practice? The flowers are a nice way to explore the spontaneous sensuality within an abstracted language. And the figuration, for me, is also slightly abstracted. Things get transformed, changed, and moved about, and the motion is important for me, the rotation of things, the way things grow and recede in space, or become clear or disappear, is something that was very engaging for me with these flowers.
Looking at your work there's observation, but then you have that emotional and expressive interpretation. Are you aware of when you stop thinking and start feeling? I try to stop thinking all the time. I think it just clouds the vision. The thinking has a funny way of stopping the seeing. Our minds are so active in a way. And sometimes they're not serving us. They're just worried about the laundry, or what we're going to have for lunch. Or I’ve got to pay that bill and I’ve got to call that person back. All of that, when I'm making art, is the enemy.
I was always very attracted to things that just happen, rather than things that we predict, or try to plan or cultivate in some way. And so, in a way, being in a place like this, maybe feels like how things were before we all had cell phones, when your day was all about who you bumped into on the street or who your friends were in the neighborhood. I think my mind works like that.
I think the nice thing about being in nature is that it does feel fleeting. Every day is a unique day to itself. And so, when I see something, I have to do it in that moment. And it also helps clarify our inner-self in some way. When you take everything away, you know what you're left with. It might be just a small pile of books and a few drawing pads, and it's a way to clarify our feelings and to clarify our ideas. In a way, an image has a way of presenting itself in a moment, it feels more urgent.
Take a closer look at Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace, 2025 here.
NICOLE WITTENBERG - Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace, 2025
Photography Garrett Carroll
