Nicola Dill

Californian artist Nicola Dill lives and works in the Los Angeles area. She received her B.F.A. with Honors from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. Her diverse practice includes commissioned portraiture for clients such as Adidas, BMG Music, Evian, Geffen Records, Microsoft, Rolling Stone, Sony Music, Vanity Fair, Virgin Records, and Warner Music Group. Grounded in a minimalist approach, her earlier fine art work evokes a sense of stillness and calm, creating compositions that often blur the line between abstraction and realism. In her current work, developed over many years in a single geographic area, she examines the contradictions and multiplicity of Los Angeles County: a landscape where urban expansion and nature coexist, where environmental vulnerability intersects with everyday life, and where moments of beauty emerge alongside disruption and uncertainty. Her photographs have been exhibited at institutions such as the Hammer Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Southeast Museum of Photography in Florida. Her work is included in the collections of the George Eastman Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Southeast Museum of Photography, the Special Collections of Stanford University and UCLA, the University Medical Center Hamburg, and the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University. Her photographs have been the subject of a monograph and special edition, Sea Etchings (Nazraeli Press, 2011 and 2012). She was nominated for the Prix Pictet (Fire) in 2021.