In this body of work, Nysa Hicks Puig treats identity as additive. Each person we love, each place we live, and each experience we carry becomes a permanent part of who we are. "There is no removal," she writes. "No less than."

Her process begins with blind contour drawing, a technique in which the artist traces a subject without looking down at the page. The resulting figures drift, stretch, and fracture: eyes set off to one side, limbs at unexpected lengths, features missing entirely. Hicks Puig builds over these initial drawings using layered color and intuitive mark-making. She keeps the distortions rather than correcting them, so the accidents become an intentional part of the finished piece.

"The lenses through which we see," Hicks Puig writes, "become a stained glass of our lives." The comparison runs through the paintings in The Pieces That Make Us Whole, with their layered color and fractured forms. Everything we experience in life shapes, and often tints, how we perceive the world around us. In her view, the imperfect pieces of our lives add up to an obra maestra: a life's masterpiece.

"Good," she writes of her off-kilter figures. "I like us that way."

The Pieces That Make Us Whole presents new mixed media works on raw textiles, wood panel, and paper. Pieces from the exhibition are available for purchase online and by appointment at Allegory Art Collective.

Join us for the opening celebration Friday, October 24th from 4:30 - 730pm