autoartgallery.com

Nicola Wood
1728 S. Bedford Street
Los Angeles, CA, 90035
USA

Tel: 1-310-839-1027

Fax: 1-310-839-8809

Born in Great Crosby, England, which lies just north of Liverpool, Nicola Wood had a quiet upbringing in a bucolic world of cows and fields and bowling greens where, as she puts it, "nothing ever happened." Though Wood would pursue a successful career as a fabric and wallpaper designer between her formal art education and her emergence as a preeminent automotive artist, Great Crosby did contribute to her eventual artistic preoccupation with the United States, most especially its cars and culture. As a youngster, Wood spent Saturday mornings "going to pictures" at the Odeon theater in Great Crosby. There, in the darkness, she fell victim to the charms of such American icons as James Dean, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, and Marilyn Monroe. These personalities were accompaniments to a wider fascination with the lure of Southern California.

continued below...

Biography continued...
Beautiful landscapes, swimming pools, gorgeous cars and exotic flora and fauna fill the haunting canvases that can take Wood as many as 600 hours to complete. The preoccupation with things American made the step to including cars in her paintings an easy one. After all, what could be more representative of the United States than the automobile, especially the tailfinned monsters of the Sixties that Wood loves? Yet she is anything but a "car painter." Cars are a critical element in her paintings, but they are no means the only element. "I love Americana, from the glamorous world of Hollywood movie stars and swimming pools to the grandeur of the western deserts and mountains to the art deco skyscrapers of New York City," Wood says. After studying at various art schools for nine years and graduating from the Royal College of Art in London with first-class honors, Wood received a Fulbright scholarship to study at Parsons School of Design in New York. In addition to her work at Parsons, she executed her first published work, a book cover for Tennessee Williams' Night of the Iguana, and produced several illustrations commissioned by CBS to promote a documentary series. These appeared as full-page advertisements in the New York Times. After nearly four years in New York, Wood returned to London and worked as a freelance fabric designer. In 1976, after spending one year in San Francisco and a stint in Taiwan, she settled in Los Angeles. Wood did not paint her first car until 1981, when she saw a black 1959 Cadillac that bore the license plate VADAR. An inner urge forced the car onto a canvas, and that first automobile has set the tone for her work ever since.

The automotive world has accorded Wood generous and deserved recognition. The Automotive Fine Arts Society (AFAS) in 1988 invited Wood to join its ranks. In 1993, her peers awarded her the Peter Helck Award, given by the AFAS membership to the artist judged the single best of the group each year. The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, mecca for automotive fine artists as well as for automobiles, has recognized Wood's talent on several occasions. She was the event's featured artist in 1993, when her painting of a 1931 Cadillac graced both the event poster and the program cover. In 1997, she was again the featured artist at Pebble Beach. And in 2002, she was selected, for the third time, as Pebble Beach's featured poster artist, this time celebrating Cadillac's 100th anniversary. "Images and scenes that before had only been fantasies are now reality as I drive a '62 Caddy ragtop in the City of Angeles." -- Nicola Wood Wood is a four-time winner of the Athena Award of Excellence, generally considered the most sought-after recognition in the automotive fine art world. She has shown her work at the Meadow Brook Concours d'Elegance, where she won the Raymond E. Holland Award, presented to the outstanding artist at the event, and at other concours including Amelia Island, Florida, and Pebble Beach and Newport Beach, California. Her work has run as cover art and featured in pictorial spreads by automobile publications, including Road and Track, Automobile Magazine and Car Collector Magazine. Many of her original oil paintings are now in the collections of corporations and individual patrons. She has had one-woman shows at both the Biarritz Art Gallery in Portland, Oregon, and at the Goldstrum Gallery in New York. In February 2001, the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles held a retrospective of Nicola Wood's work.