William Nichols (artist)

"[20] Gallerist Ivan Karp wrote, "the vital pulse" of Nichols's paintings defies "the conviction that 400 years of depictions of the natural world nullify the ability of living artists to produce landscapes of high consequence.

[25][26] His mature, painterly realist vocabulary developed intuitively and incorporated influences from Impressionism to Japanese woodblock prints and screens; inspired by photography's ability to capture fleeting qualities of light with precision and clarity, he began using it as reference to facilitate a more thorough reflection on specific, sometimes extraordinary moments or events, such as the freak, early snowstorm depicted in First Snow Santa Fe (2012).

[12] In 1979, OK Harris held the first of twelve solo exhibitions (through 2013) of his work;[27][28][29] he has also shown at galleries such as Tory Folliard (Milwaukee), Robert Kidd (Birmingham), and Thomas Paul (Los Angeles), and internationally, in Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Taiwan.

"[1] Hallmarks of signature works, such as Overgrown Garden (1984), include: a focus on the landscape in fragmented close-up rather than vista-like views;[31][2] large scale; gestural paint handling that creates both painstaking, tactile detail and abstract, lyrical patterning;[20][4] and an atmospheric quality of light that derives from his use of photographic reference and Impressionistic understanding of color theory.

[9][16] Curator John Arthur emphasizes Nichols's framing of the landscape with close, screen-like, enveloping views that often lack contextual clues such as horizon, and merely hint at the expanses beyond with light penetrating dense enclosures of thicket and foliage (e.g., Along a Road in Door County, 2016).

"[15] The high level of detail and realism in Nichols's paintings distinguishes him from Impressionists and has prompted writers to liken his work to painterly landscape artists, such as Winslow Homer and Jane Freilicher, and to Photorealism.