Collection: Duane Nickerson

Duane Nickerson exhibited at the John Mann Gallery SQUARE FOOT 2024 exhibition.

Duane Nickerson is an award-winning, internationally recognized Canadian artist who lives and works near Toronto. Born in 1965 into a family of nine children in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Nickerson began painting in oils at 12 years of age. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary in 1991 and the same year was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal Award for Graduate Study.

Nickerson has travelled extensively, including a 7 year sojourn in Borneo. His paintings reside in public and private collections in Australia, Brunei, Canada, France, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, the UK and the United States. Oil painting is his primary focus, although he uses drawing and watercolour media to explore composition and gather ideas. His work has spanned a full range of subject matter from figure painting to still life to landscape. Throughout his career, Nickerson has engaged with in-depth exploration of surface and form, and his compositions often defy the conventions associated with traditional oil painting. He often refers to his painting process as: “gleaning meaning from the visual topography of my surroundings.” His work is known for rigorous attention to technique, the use of archival quality artist materials and thematic concerns involving time and transcendence.