Alexandra Nicole
Building a life centered around the natural world
I’m from a little barrier island called St. Simons, almost in the middle of Georgia’s coastline. I was allowed to be a slightly feral marsh girl for much of my childhood, so pretty early on, I knew I wanted a life centered around the natural world. As a kid, I would check out field guides from the library because I was intent on identifying the shells, bugs, and birds I came across. I showed an affinity for the arts early on and, after a failed stint in t-ball, I landed in weekly lessons with a local artist in her marsh front studio.
When it was time to go to college, I strongly considered art school but chose to study wildlife and fisheries biology (go dawgs). I pursued a career as a biologist, working
with a number of species from sea turtles in the Caribbean to shorebirds throughout the Gulf of Mexico. During this time, I began painting more seriously and slowly developed my art business as a parallel venture. I loved the travel and fieldwork that biology offered, but I always came back to my art as a way to process and share those experiences.
As my art practice has grown into my full-time work, I’ve found other ways to stay connected to the natural resource field. These days, fly fishing has become a different kind of fieldwork for me. It’s an activity that gets me outside, puts me in beautiful places, keeps my observational skills sharp, and continuously leaves
me feeling inspired.
I’ve always been interested in looking closely at the world, and I approach painting much like I approached fieldwork: observing, collecting references, and trying to understand what makes a scene compelling. My studio has slowly become a small natural history collection of its own, filled with shells, specimens, sketches, and other things that have caught my attention along the way.
Through my work, I hope to share some of that curiosity and give people a reason to look a little closer at the world around them.