Nicole Renee Ryan is a watercolorist, oil painter, and muralist from Mercer, Pennsylvania, whose work explores the fragile terrain between memory and imagination. Rather than depicting traditional landscapes, Nicole paints imagined spaces—places she feels she has been, but cannot quite locate. Her fascination with memory’s fallibility began during her studies in psychology at Washington & Jefferson College and continues to shape her approach to painting.

Through color, shape, and ethereal forms, Nicole’s work captures the hazy space where memories blur into dreams, where the real and the imagined intertwine. Each painting becomes a meditation on how we remember, misremember, and dream, inviting viewers into landscapes that feel both familiar and elusive.

Nicole has been recognized with a residency at the New York Student’s League at Vytacil, a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a Flight School Fellowship through the Heinz Endowments. She was nominated for Pittsburgh Emerging Artist of the Year in 2016, and her work has been exhibited nationally, including the Heinz History Center, the Butler Museum of American Art, and galleries in New York City, Chicago, and Miami. Her most recent solo show, Land of Little Thoughts and No Worries, was hosted at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.