Cover Story: Whitney Nye in The Winged M Arts Issue
An athlete and an artist, fully in her body, and most alive when she has no idea where she is going
PRESS & MEDIA · APRIL 2026
Whitney Nye has always been physical. A skier, a tennis player, a gymnast, and now a devoted pickleball player, she understands intuitively what athletes know and artists sometimes forget: that the body leads, and the mind follows. In her Northwest Front Avenue studio in Portland, housed in a historic building laid out like an M.C. Escher sketch, that understanding plays out across every surface. Tables topple with paints, brushes, and art supplies. Walls are covered floor to ceiling in stapled canvases in various states of becoming. Nye moves between them with the focused fluidity of someone who has spent a lifetime trusting her body to know what comes next.
It is exactly that quality that drew The Winged M to her studio for the April 2026 Arts Issue, where Nye's work appears on the cover and across a full feature inside. Photographed by Brandon Davis while painting Whirlygirl (2026, oil on canvas, 71 x 82 inches), she is caught mid-gesture, arm raised to a swirling canvas that fills the wall behind her. The image is magnetic: an artist completely and joyfully inside her work.
“I like to move around, and I like the risk-taking.”
The feature traces the remarkable breadth of Nye's practice across painting, sculpture, and collage, with works spanning two decades. Bubble Vision (2025, oil on canvas, 60 x 69 inches) anchors the arts pages alongside Pin (2014, reclaimed wood and glass, 22.5 x 1.75 inches) and Honey (2009, gouache on panel, 72 x 48 inches), a deeply personal collage that weaves her grandmother's tissue-paper sewing patterns with her own cut prints and colored glosses. Each work reveals an artist who trusts her instincts above all else
““I don’t know where I’m going with this piece. I don’t know what color I’m using. I’m finding out where I’m going, and I like not knowing how I’m going to get there.””
That fearless openness has produced a practice of genuine range and ambition. Raised by makers — a mother who worked in clay and a grandmother who sewed everything from clothes to slippers — Nye studied textiles at the University of Oregon before her curiosity carried her into installation, sculpture, and the large-scale paintings she is now celebrated for. She has created a permanent installation for Portland International Airport, completed a residency at a landfill that grew into a traveling exhibition of reclaimed glass-and-wood work, and maintains studios in both Portland and New York, each sharpening her eye in a different way.
It is a body of work built on movement, material, and the willingness to not know.
The April 2026 Arts Issue of The Winged M, by Multnomah Athletic Club is available now. Photography by Brandon Davis; art direction and design by Jen Gillette.
Whitney Nye maintains studios in Portland, OR and New York City.
CONNECT WITH THE STUDIO
Schedule a Studio Visit Available in Portland and New York by appointment
Request a Catalogue View available works & price list.
All Other Inquiries Contact Whitney's studio manager
