Arcmanoro Niles
Arcmanoro Niles (born 1989 Washington, D.C.) is an American visual artist working in painting. Niles is known for his life-sized portraits in gem-toned hues that focus on African-American contemporary narratives, often depicting individuals in states of psychological negotiation. Niles was born in Washington, D.C., in 1989, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated high school from Duke Ellington School of the Arts in 2008, while also attending night classes at Washington Studio School. He later graduated from the School of Art and Design at Montgomery Community College, Silver Spring (2010), Pennsylvania  Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (BFA, 2013), and the New York Academy of Art, New York (MFA, 2015). Niles was also an artist in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2018. Biography. Niles is known for his life-sized portraits in gem-toned hues that focus on African-American contemporary narratives. His paintings explore everyday events that appear banal, but in fact represent introspective moments in which the subjects are undergoing a shift in consciousness, or significant life changes. Niles explains, "at the end of the day, I am a painter who is interested in color  and stories that talk about who we are. Little moments that give us a glimpse into what life feels like." He uses family photographs, as well as his own photographs and memories as references. Friends, family members, and the artist himself often appear in Niles’ paintings. Niles is a traditionally trained painter. In his works, he references classical portraits while also calling the history of painting into question by using highly saturated color palettes over orange and blue grounds. This creates his distinctive saturated palette which demonstrates complex and luminous, gold-like skin tones. His interest in creating vividly-colored  was "a response to his frustration at not being able to achieve the depth of tonality he saw in the skin tones of his family and friends." Niles explains, “I was always interested in color... always trying to pull together all these colors that I saw, or thought I saw, in my darker flesh: bright reds, deep purples and golden tones.” His use of glitter, often on the body hair of his subjects, emphasizes the complexity of color and the identities of the subjects. Niles removed neutral colors from his artistic palette, including blacks, whites, and browns around 2013, which  gave way to his interest in a more colorful palette. In his portraits, Niles often includes what he calls “seekers”, which are small amorphous figures or stick figures that appear along the edges of the paintings. Niles developed the idea of the seekers after visiting the Brooklyn Museum in 2015 and drawing an Egyptian fertility sculpture from the collection. He began including this image in his paintings, which eventually morphed into an inclusion of entities in the form of seekers. These seekers represent the external and internal forces that influence his subjects. They are often depicted using violent, self-destructive , and sexual gestures, that counter the stillness and contemplative nature of the main subjects. “Seekers,” says Niles, “are more impulsive, chasing whatever they think will make them happy in that moment, with no fear of consequence, while the human subjects are more vulnerable and open with their feelings.” The seekers disrupt the compositions, creating otherworldly elements to the painting.