This body of work stems from the idea of a bloom, exploring how that concept shows up—both literally and metaphorically—across my paintings.

Each piece is built through thousands of individual gestures. I’m interested in the way sustained attention and labor will generate complexity, and how the accumulation of small acts can feel cosmic in scale and be transformative in effect. I engage deeply with the material nature of paint—how it pools, spreads, and moves across the surface, and how layering generates depth and richness. The work balances intention and surrender, precision and spontaneity. I think of moments like the gradual unfurling of a bud and the unpredictable expansion of pigment meeting water—each requires patience, and each holds the potential for surprise.

I’m drawn to the place where nature and human-made structures overlap, where patterns repeat across plants, buildings, and systems. Working with collage, painting, and printmaking techniques, I build densely layered surfaces. One of my distinctive processes involves placing thousands of beads of paint by hand, each one applied with a brush to form intricate screens. The work hovers between abstraction and representation, carrying hints of botanical forms and architectural structures amid fields of pattern.

For me, making art is a defiantly personal act—a way of insisting on the handmade, the slow, the deliberate. In a culture that values speed, I’m drawn to the slow bloom—one shaped by patience, repetition, and care. Returning again and again to place another mark, another bead of color, becomes a way of honoring process, and of insisting on the importance of complexity, beauty, and close looking. My hope is that this intention is something that you can both see and feel.

Nina Tichava, January 2026