Niki McQueen
I am a disabled visual artist from South Africa, with a background in Marine Biology. After completing my MSc, I changed careers and pursued her first love, creativity, in graphic design and communications.
As COVID swept the globe, found an outlet from the fear and the frustration of confinement, and revived and developed an artmaking technique learned decades earlier, using handmade underprints created from digital composites.
I began to find sanity and peace in a turbulent world through creating intensive symbolic representation in my creations, which are manifestations of an urgent, unquenchable need for the expression of years of unfulfilled longings, losses, triumphs, lessons and personal evolution.
I am enamoured with the surreal, extraordinary, macabre, mythology and storytelling. I draw inspiration from multiple sources, from vintage medical and scientific collections to surrealism and magical realism. I create digital composites using hand-drawn and public domain images, which are expertly and painstakingly hand-printed and drawn onto archival papers and then worked into with inks, watercolours, and mixed media. They express my fascination with the sciences, biology, with my own emotional and spiritual disturbances and revelation, and they encompass themes of psychology, whimsy, humour, mystical exploration and the macabre.
To date I have sold over 130 original artworks and numerous fine art prints globally and have group-exhibited in 6 cities in South Africa.
I placed in three prestigious local competitions, including the Sasol New Signatures Art Competition in 2021 and twice in the Vuleka competition. I also won the Africa Regional Award in the international Copic Awards, 2021. I represented South Africa at the Art Connects Women Exhibit in Dubai in March 2023.
I published my first book of art and poetry in 2022 and was very proud to collaborate in 2022 with The Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer to create a collection of artworks for their 2023 tour.
