Portland Studios Artist Profile | August 2021

► Interview with Whitney Nye | 2021.07.28 | 13:30 | By Jeff Scherer

Panning for gold. Listening to Buck Owens. Fixing it yourself. Respecting your elders. Prowling for new views. Never taking the same path. Wandering with eyes wide open.

In Portland Studio

Whitney’s art is as close to a personification of her peripatetic life as one could ever imagine. She was and continues to be spirit-guided by her maternal grandmother, Esther and her mother, Juanita. Her Finnish grandmother, made her way from Eastern Oregon to San Francisco in search of gold—all the while making her and her children’s clothes and being ever resourceful to make ends meet. Juanita was supportive of her daughter to become an artist, www.whitneynye.com . Her mother taught her how to be resourceful; her father taught her self-reliance and how to be “hands-on."

Dance Now, Talk Later | 2025 | Oil on Canvas | 54 x 35 "

Whitney started by studying textiles at the University of Oregon. She was drawn to the simplicity and serenity of the woven structure. Whitney started constructing 3-dimensional forms with the woven material, and In her Junior year, her instructor, Barbara Setsu-Pickett, surprised Whitney with a scholarship to study with Kay Sekimachi at Penland School. Textiles and sculpture are woven into Whitney’s practice, but painting is her predominant method of expression. These ventures are guided and inspired by her informed intuition.

This intuition has, in turn, been shaped and illuminated by the influences of her family, friends and, most importantly, her keen self-awareness. Whitney is constantly observing her surroundings and, with fearlessness, challenges the status quo when something offends her visual sense of correctness. One example is her dislike of the blue color of the recycling bins used in Portland. Whitney, affronted by the misuse of this particular color blue, called the city to complain and, more importantly, tried to see if there could be an alternative color, chosen by artists, for upcoming changes in the ordinances. She says her “trained eye” was a result of her parents keen sense of aesthetics and craft (her mother is an artist and her father a hand surgeon.) Besides being offended by the choices of the city, she is also environmentally aware and willing to speak up about imbalance—inspired by Nancy Russell’s relentless and tireless efforts to save the Columbia Gorge. It is clear that Whitney is driven by “why” —always seeking to make changes that will make the world a better place.

Petal to the Metal | 2025 | Oil on Canvas | 62 x 53 "

Color, for Whitney, establishes the experiential qualities of her art. As she begins the mixing process she knows intuitively when to stop mixing. The serendipity of color, guided by her intuitive compass, is central to her work. She knows “the exact right time to stop mixing and applying the color.”

Bubble Visions | 2025 | Oil on Canvas | 60”x 69”

In the interview, I posited a theoretical question: If she were to be confined to one, four-walled room with one window for the rest of her life, and were allowed to painted the walls any color she wanted but could not change the color, what color would she choose? Her answer: White. “White gives a neutral setting and would not be boring over time. It would change by the light through the window.”

This answer is revealing: Whitney is open to change and does not want to be constrained. This attitude has enabled Whitney to move seamlessly from painting to mixed-media assemblages and sculpture. Her experimental abstract creative process, while being guided by her intuition, is also creatively channeled by music. Given her peripatetic nature, Whitney is seldom content to focus on one painting at a time. She moves effortlessly between several works at one time—letting her internal creative intuition guide her choice of where to work, what to do next and when to stop. It is this external artistic manifestation of her internal guiding principles that has resulted in work that is held in numerous prestigious private, public and corporate collections. Art in Embassies program in Brunei, Southeast Asia;  A New State of Matter: Contemporary Glass at the Boise Art Museum and Grand Rapids Art Museum. Vermont Studio Center Fellowship; Golden Spot Award Ford Family Foundation; Career Opportunity Grant Oregon Arts Commission. Nye’s work is in the permanent collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, Oregon; Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon; Ford Alumni Center at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon; and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN. Whitney exhibits her work locally at Russo Lee Gallery.

Website: https://whitneynye.com

Instagram: @whitneynye