Her canvases are busy. Her focus on mark making. An assembly of lines and colour. “One day I accidentally stepped on a painting (I prefer to work on the floor) All of a sudden there was a delightful new mark – my shoe print! Since then, I added random pattern stamps to my mark making repertoire”

Michele uses materials such as charcoal, conte, high flow acrylics, watercolour, inks, stamps, stencils and handmade brushes to push the boundaries of each medium as far as possible yet succeeding in creating final works of harmony and integrity.

The originality and beauty of Nigrini’s work is in her ability to allow the “spirit” of each medium to dictate its own space and pace without unbalancing the unity within the whole. Where her previous solo exhibition “Outside in” included garden and architectural structures within the landscape, “Organic Matters” depicts the layering of organic plant shapes and marks.

I paint a personal response to what I see as opposed to just reproducing what I see.

Michele feels creation is a process not a product. She makes the simple complicated by intuitively creating chaos and then cognitively curating the chaos. Spirit of place made visible by the spirit of chance.

“I make my own tools from objects around the environment that I find myself in. I have the privilege to work in two provinces. In my Rosendal studio which is a very small farmers hamlet, my favourite brush is made of maize leaves and in my Stanford studio which is a village in Fynbos heaven, I love working with dried protea flowers. making repertoire.

I also use stencils, brooms and kitchen cleaning objects which makes the process delightfully unpredictable. I don’t like to know what is going to happen. At the point I can predict the results I get bored! “

Mark-making is the visual vocabulary an artist uses in an abstract painting and is considered an artist’s own personal visual language. Layers and layers of different mark-making creates an abstract piece. Mark making is also the skill that allows material signification and creative thinking to mingle together. A dialogue that influences our aesthetic vision by changing, mediating and regulating the flows of energy and matter.

What makes the use of a mark significant? they were created or curated with attention and intent. The artwork is the product of the journey that the work has been on in my studio. If I have to produce a big exhibition, I prefer to do it in the area of the exhibition itself or that the whole body of work is done around a theme or a place because the textures, colours and structures of each environment dictate the development of my artwork which whilst predominately abstract, are based on fleeting images, imagination and experiences. She refers to her style as “gestural expressionism”