ARTIST BIO

Whitney Nye is an American contemporary artist whose large-scale mixed-media abstractions explore the interplay of movement, perception, and environment. Working fluidly across painting, sculpture, and collage, Nye engages her whole body in the creative process, shifting between gestural mark-making and moments of contemplative distance. Her practice is deeply influenced by the contrasting rhythms of her two studios—one in the kinetic density of New York City, the other in the expansive quiet of Portland, Oregon—allowing each location to reveal distinct visual vocabularies.

Nye’s works often blur the boundaries between what is seen and what is sensed, inviting viewers to first experience the composition from afar before discovering intricate details and textural surprises up close. Intuition guides her approach, leading her to experiment with materials ranging from layered paper cutouts to three-dimensional forms. While her process remains open and unconstrained, painting remains central—a demanding and infinite terrain she continually redefines.

Born in 1966 in San Francisco, Nye earned her BA in Studio Arts from the University of Oregon in 1989. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in public and private collections, including the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, and the Art in Embassies program in Brunei, Southeast Asia. She has completed numerous large-scale public art installations, including projects for Portland International Airport and Nike World Campus. She has been awarded residencies at Caldera Arts and Vermont Studio Center through the Ford Family Foundation. Her studio practice continues to evolve through an ongoing dialogue between body, material, and place. Nye lives in Oregon and wo.rks between her studios in Portland, OR, and New York, NY.

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