Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Nicole Rifkin’s Nostalgia-Soaked Illustrations

Nicole Rifkin, a Brooklyn-based artist who specializes in digital illustration, offers nostalgic, brightly hued narratives in her pieces. Rifkin, who does editorial work for The New Yorker and Medium and founded of the art magazine Ipsum, creates scenes that obscure faces and figures, rendering pops of colorful abstraction against realism.

Nicole Rifkin, a Brooklyn-based artist who specializes in digital illustration, offers nostalgic, brightly hued narratives in her pieces. Rifkin, who does editorial work for The New Yorker and Medium and founded of the art magazine Ipsum, creates scenes that obscure faces and figures, rendering pops of colorful abstraction against realism.

In a 2014 interview with Constructed By, Rifkin cited music as a primary influence on her work. Chief among a list with names like Superchunk and Slint, she offered the nostalgic tone of Arcade Fire’s tunes as an oft-used backdrop during the process of creating a new piece. Non-fiction books and the “gorgeous” films of David Lynch were also listed as having significance in her work. Tomes like Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small, she says, “makes me feel like I need to work harder.”


A graduate of the Pratt Institute, Rifkin is currently in the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She was recently part of group shows in Los Angeles at spaces like Gallery 1988 and Hero Complex Gallery. Aside from creating these kinetic works of pop art, Rifkin says her interests include “sleep and becoming more like Oprah.”





Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Netherlands-based illustrator Marald Van Haasteren has crafted art for bands since the late ’80s. His work, for the likes of Baroness, High on Fire, Kylesa, and several others, carries both provocative and elegant elements. These works range from colored pencil and acrylic paintings to digital pieces.
When Yeats wrote that "love comes in at the eye,” he could have been thinking of the work of Vienna-based Atelier Olschinsky. It doesn't matter who the client is. It doesn't matter what the medium is. You walk away from this creative studio's work with a clear understanding of why we call the visual arts visual. You also realize how art has its own language. A language made up of nothing more than the arrangement of color, line, shape, space, and texture. We marvel at how Shakespeare worked with nothing more than 26 letters. In a similar vein, Atelier Olschinsky creates startling compositions with nothing more than muted color, dynamic, abutted shapes, and clashing lines. With great dexterity they blur the gap between art and design.
Cannon Dill has been living in Oakland for over 14 years, and credits much of his time spent in the city to the development of his artistic style. He once said that the confinement of a daily routine left him daydreaming about nature. Featured on our blog, his illustration work and murals are painted in response to this push and pull between our uniquely human lifestyle and that of animals. With his upcoming exhibition "In My Own Time" at Spoke Art gallery in San Francisco, Dill takes a moment to further explore his immediate surroundings.

Jon MacNair

The work of artists Dan Barry and Jon MacNair come together for "Captive Illusions" at Stranger Factory this month. “Together,” the gallery says, “the duo create a show that sends the viewer into surreal and playful worlds with characters that come to life in warm color schemes.” Barry was last featured on HiFructose.com here, and MacNair was most recently mentioned here.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List