Nicola Russell is an artist based in New York City.

Nicola Russell is an American-Canadian artist based in New York City. She earned a BA in Studio Art with a minor in Philosophy from Hobart and William Smith Colleges (2019), followed by an MFA from the New York Academy of Art (2024). In 2018, after studying at the Leo Marchutz School in Aix-en-Provence, France, she began painting landscapes en plein air—an ongoing element of her multidisciplinary practice.

Her work spans portraiture, landscape, and figurative painting, unified by a deep interest in human emotion and the environments we navigate. Her current body of work, Subway Series, reflects on the quiet rhythms of urban life and the absurdity of existence. Working primarily in oil on panel, she uses heavily thinned paint to create dry, muted surfaces that echo the fleeting, often overlooked moments she captures. Through intimate portrayals of anonymous figures on the New York City subway—often caught in moments of solitude, fatigue, or inward reflection—Russell invites viewers to discover tenderness, humor, and beauty in the mundane details of daily life.