Nicole Mueller

Portrait of the artist, San Francisco, CA, 2024 Photography by Cayce Clifford

Nicole Mueller is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in San Francisco, CA. Her work includes large-scale abstract paintings, murals, and installations in vibrant, lyrical color palettes that explore the influence of the environment on the self.

Mueller received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and has been an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, Proyecto ‘ace, and others. In addition to recent exhibitions with Lowell Ryan Projects and Berggruen Gallery, she has completed permanent public art installations with the City of Tempe, Arizona, the City of Alameda, California, as well as painting commissions for brands such as Google and Louis Vuitton. In addition to her artistic practice, Mueller is also co-host of Beyond the Studio podcast.

The artist at her studio in San Francisco, CA, 2024 Photography by Cayce Clifford

Hugh Leeman: I want to go back and start with what we were talking before getting started, you grew up outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Take me on that journey, from when you were a child until now, of when you started thinking, "I want to be an artist," to the point of taking action on it, and then the moment of saying, in the privacy of your mind, "I am an artist." What did that look like for you, and where does that start?

Nicole Mueller: I was always drawing as a kid. I think that I didn't necessarily consider myself an artist with a capital A, but I was just really creative, like all kids are. And so drawing was a real passion, and I was really enamored by these animated films that I would watch as a kid and wanting to uncover the process. And so I would try and make my own animated films. And that was really my entry point into art making was through drawing and through animation. Even up until the time I was in high school, I thought that I was going to pursue illustration or animation as some kind of a career path. But I took a painting class one summer and just really fell in love with the material. And so I think from that point on I was really interested in painting as a medium and a vehicle for making work. I really feel that being an artist or choosing to be an artist is a series of actions or decisions made, sometimes daily, but there are these turning points to sort of set yourself on that path. And I think pursuing art school was one of those. Making the move from the East Coast to the West Coast was another one of those. But I was always, always drawing and always really interested in painting and being a painter. That was always kind of the dream. I didn't really have a lot of references growing up. It really wasn't until I got to art school that I started getting exposed to this world.

Loopback, 60 x 96 in., Acrylic on canvas, 2024 Photography by Charles White

HL: You've spoken previously about the ups and downs of being an artist and how you feel fortunate for the support system you've had amidst this ever-rising bar of sustainability. How do you manage this ever-rising bar, your support systems, and the ups and downs of what it's like to be an artist?

NM: There are a couple different ways to look at it. There's the emotional ebbs and flows of just navigating the creative process, and then there are these more external pressures like the practicalities or financially—the economics of how to make it work as an artist. I feel like these things are distinct but intertwined as far as how this all comes together to build a life as an artist. It requires self-determination, but also all of these somewhat existential questions of "What do you want your life to look like?" "What does success look like to you?" are all questions that are deeply personal that we have to answer for ourselves as artists. As far as my own support system, I'm grateful that my parents were encouraging, and my partner, who works as an art director designer, shares a level of dedication to their creative work that I think helps fuel both of our careers.

Figure Eights, 60 x 96 in., Acrylic on canvas, 2024 Photography by Charles White

HL: Going back to your quote, "the accolades don't necessarily pay the bills," and connecting us with that ever-rising bar: What are the metrics of success for an artist today, and how do you view that?

NM: It's pretty individualized in that not every artist is trying to support themselves through their creative practice. But I think gaining clarity around whatever that is for you is really important because it tends to be such an ambiguous path. I think there are similar pressures and challenges that artists face to sustain economically, to assert the value of our work within a society that's constantly defunding the arts. Defining for yourself what it is you really want, and being sort of unapologetic about that, is almost like a prerequisite for moving things forward. For me, that aspect of sustainability was always important. When I moved out to San Francisco and decided that I wanted to shift the focus onto my studio practice, it was a real eye-opener for me to be living in a city with such a high cost of living. I had to get really honest about what it would really take to sustain a creative practice and what were the steps that I needed to take to get there.

Knockout, 60 x 96 in., Acrylic on canvas, 2024 Photography by Charles White

HL: You once said that painting is a vehicle for traveling deeper into ourselves and navigating the complexities of the world. How does your painting practice allow a deeper sense of connection to yourself?

NM: The studio for me has always been a place where I can cultivate a spirit of risk-taking while allowing myself to fall down these rabbit holes around personal interests—of color, of language, of painting as a vehicle for tapping into something subconscious. I like the idea of painting being linguistic and of it being a really responsive practice. Paintings evolve really intuitively, really organically, and often start with a sense of color or a vague notion of a memory, and then trying to preserve that potentiality for as long as possible. One of the paintings that I made for my show in LA last year is called Mind Gardening. It's about cultivating a more intentional relationship with things we consume online. It's through these physical acts like painting that we can access the internal or the subconscious. And so I think that's where I feel closest to myself: in the studio when I'm painting.

Knockout (detail)
Photography by Charles White

HL: Your art is a "personal visual language," which you express through painting and color psychology. Now that you're expanding into public projects with glass and mosaic, moving out of the privacy of your studio: How has that personal language changed and evolved?

NM: I've always viewed those public projects as an extension of my studio practice and of the language that I've been developing in the paintings. Something that I'm really interested in is this idea of contrast and dualities, whether that's through color or the application of paint, and using those to create these spaces that are tied to memories or to the idea of the kind of internal landscape. There is a duality between the private and public space, and I'm excited by the challenge of bringing the paintings out into the public realm. They also allow me opportunities to do things that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do in a studio, whether that's scaling up the work to an extreme or visualizing what the paintings might look like in a completely different material like tile mosaic. But I think it always comes back to the paintings for me, and maintaining that painting practice in the studio and continuing to hone that language becomes even more important.

The artist at her studio in San Francisco, CA, 2024 Photography by Cayce Clifford

HL: You had a huge project in Tempe, and you emphasized wanting to fabricate the mosaic yourself as opposed to outsourcing it. What did that hands-on process teach you about authorship and about the idea of creativity?

NM: Well, I think for me as a painter whose work is so tied to this idea of language and painting as a kind of event that originates through a really physical and intuitive process, it's been difficult for me to imagine ways of outsourcing that creative process. So trying to stay involved in the making of the work has been really important. With the mosaic piece, for example, there is an element of pre-planning, but allowing room for improvisation and for creative decision making in the assembly of tiles—thinking about how to make this material that is inherently rigid and geometric feel very fluid and organic and spontaneous in the way the paintings do—was a kind of exciting challenge. Those were the driving questions behind that work: how can I imagine my paintings in another material? Being really hands-on with that approach felt like the most authentic way to try and interpret my painting process in a different material.

The artist at her studio in San Francisco, CA, 2024 Photography by Cayce Clifford

HL: Public art requires a certain level of emotional intelligence to navigate teams and vendors. How has this collaborative aspect impacted your perspective at the times that you're alone in the studio working on something and there's no one else around?

NM: It makes me cherish those times in the studio when I really just have a sort of quiet time to myself. But I also really love those aspects of the public art process and enjoy working with people. Even some of the more logistical aspects of a project, like the researching or budgeting, which you have to love a little bit if you're going to be taking on public art projects. Working in higher education and other arts administrative roles, I think, has really helped now when taking on these public projects, because so much of it is administrative or about communications and collaboration. But also, one of the reasons that I wanted to fabricate some of these pieces myself is so that I could preserve those elements of my creative process where I'm working alone in the studio and have this quiet time to process and reflect.

Clark Park, LithoMosaic fabrication in process at the artist’s studio, 2023 Photography by Cayce Clifford

HL: You spoke about the ebbs and flows of the artist career. How do you personally navigate the pauses and transitions of going from a major project, where you're up on a 100-foot tall boom, to being back in the studio where there's just the sound of the air conditioning, so to speak?

NM: It's learning to embrace these continual changes as a part of the creative process and to again not be so fearful of them. I feel more comfortable now in the ebbs, trusting that something else is around the corner. But having conversations with other artists is another source of support, because there is so much time just spent on your own in your own head. For me, the projects give me the space and the runway or the safety net to be able to have those times in the studio where I'm just making work for myself or without a destination in mind. I've been learning to really cherish those times too, because there is a risk that you can get so caught up with projects that you start to drift away from your personal creative practice a little bit. So, I think being able to return to that and to make drawings in the studio or paintings that I don't plan to show anyone, that are just more experimental, is something I'm trying to do more of.

Clark Park, LithoMosaic fabrication in process at the artist’s studio, 2023 Photography by Cayce Clifford

HL: Pulling together the idea of public art and the diminishing of cultural funding: What role do you see artists playing in shaping how communities experience public spaces, especially at a time when there is a rethinking of cultural investment from the federal level on down?

NM: Artists have always had to find ways to make their work despite the external challenges or pressures of the day. In that sense, I think that there is a level of resiliency and creativity that artists have always had to cultivate as a part of their pursuit of this life and their building of community. The reliance on other artists and on tapping into those creative communities is how we sustain ourselves, and also how artists begin to kind of reshape or rebuild or imagine alternatives for how to live or for what societies can look like or for what support for artists can look like. I think those kinds of examples can have a sort of snowball effect where the more artists that get together and rely on one another in mutually supportive ways, that can become a sort of beacon for other aspects of society.

Installation view, Lowell Ryan Projects, Los Angeles, CA, 2024 Photography by Charles White

HL: There's a lot of myth and romance around creative careers. What's a myth about the life of an artist that sticks out to you that you'd like to dismantle for younger generations?

NM: This is such a good question. I think there's a real romanticization within art schools and as a younger artist that things would just sort of magically materialize or eventually fall into place. And I think one of the realities is that it is so much more dependent on a level of ownership and agency over your own work and career, and really not waiting for opportunities to come to you. You have to be willing to take the first step of reaching out, of making something happen for yourself. I mean, I feel like other artists have said this all the time—just like planning your own exhibitions or creating your own platforms, your own podcasts. The myth or idea that eventually at a certain level you'll get picked up with some major gallery representation that is going to kind of solve all the logistical problems of sustaining a life—I really don't think that's true. The earlier that you can embrace the idea that you do have agency and ownership over your own career, the sooner I think you'll be able to reach those goals that you've set out for yourself.

Mind Gardening (detail) Photography by Charles White

HL: If you looked back on your life from your deathbed, so to speak, are there things that you think would be really fulfilling that you had done along the way, that would be a sort of ultimate realization of your goals?

NM: Wow, that's such a great pie-in-the-sky question. I mean, I think I have a lot of goals or ambitions for different projects, like wanting to see the work exist at a certain scale or in different materials for different types of spaces. I love the idea of scaling up the work and creating really immersive environments. When I was working on the project for Tempe, I had been pulling inspiration from other painters who had stepped into spatial design or making stained glass, like Ellsworth Kelly's Chapel in Austin, Texas, or Matisse's chapel in the South of France. Something like that would be kind of a dream project. I mean, in some ways the goals that I have are a little bit romantic in that just finding ways to sustain the studio to where I can just be a painter and live in some bucolic place and have like a beautiful outdoor barn studio that I walk to through my garden every day and just make my paintings. I romanticize that as some future vision.

Mind Gardening, 60 x 96 in., Acrylic on canvas, 2024 Photography by Charles White

HL: When you're getting ready for your podcast with Amanda, Beyond the Studio, what is the framework that you're thinking on—what do you want to ask people, and is there something you wish more people would talk about?

NM: Well, I think when we started the podcast, we had a pretty specific idea of the kinds of conversations that we wanted to have with artists. And that was really about the nuts and bolts of how are they sustaining their creative work—the things that felt a little bit too taboo to ask someone, even a close friend, like "Hey, how did you actually get that museum show?" or "How did this project come about?" It was coming from a real place of wanting to figure it out for ourselves, but I think it's really expanded over the years to become about much more than that. The focus has always been about the career end of how artists are managing their professional lives and finding ways to sustain their work. Beyond that, I think the questions are pretty individualized. We try and just research each artist.

Portrait of the artist, San Francisco, CA, 2023 Photography by Cayce Clifford

HL: These paintings are finished?

NM: Yes.

HL: Where did they start?

NM: I would say they always start with color. Sometimes I have a sense of the kind of palette that I want to explore. For example, this piece called Loop Back is all about contrasts. I was interested in the relationship between this kind of saturated cadmium orange with these like deeper cobalts, ultramarine blues. But often times I don't really have a predetermined idea of what the painting will be or what the color palette is. I've always loved that blank canvas feeling of starting with a flood of color or a wash of something and kind of seeing what emerges out of that, and then building the painting from there.

Hugh Leeman: If someone has never seen your art and you bump into them and they say, "Oh, you're an artist," and then ask, "What do your paintings look like, how do you describe them?"

Nicole Mueller: Oh my gosh. I think I usually try and gauge the actual level of interest. Sometimes I'll just say, "I make big abstract paintings," and maybe that's enough. Or if it seems like there's a kind of appetite for more conversation, I might say that while I'm making these big abstract paintings that are really colorful and vibrant, I'm interested in personal psychology and interior landscapes, and this idea of contrast and dichotomies. Something for me that I've always gravitated towards with abstraction is that it kind of eludes easy descriptions like this; I like that it sort of asks for you to enter the painting on its own terms. I remember the first time that I encountered a Joan Mitchell painting and just having this almost like visceral reaction where I didn't really know what I was looking at, but I was just so affected by the energy that it held. For the work to have that kind of emotional resonance, I think there's something that the artist has to embody to be able to transmit that into the work.