Nicole Duennebier: Night Table

September 12 - 29, 2025

Nicole Duennebier received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Maine College of Art with a major in painting. Her BFA thesis work was most influenced by research into the coastal ecosystems of Maine. In 2006 she was awarded the Monhegan Island Artists Residency. On the island she continued her work with sea life, and perceived a natural connection between the darkness and intricacy of undersea regions and the aesthetic of 16th-century Dutch still-life painting.

In 2008 Duennebier moved to the Boston area, and now lives and works in Malden. She is a 2016 and 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Painting Fellow and her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and New Britain Museum of American Art. Writing about Bright Beast, her 2013 solo show at the Lilypad in Cambridge, Cate McQuaid of the Boston Globe said Duennebier’s “technical mastery gives the artist what she needs to seduce the viewer; the content lowers the boom.” Duennebier has also been featured in the Portland Press Herald, Art New England and Hi-Fructose Magazine, among other publications. Duennebier has worked alongside her sister Caitlin Duennebier for a number of collaborative exhibitions, most recently “Love Superior, a Death Supreme” at Simmons University. Earlier this year she had a solo exhibition at Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles and exhibited paintings at the Shelburne Musueum, Vermont.


Natural phenomenon—dermoid cysts, fungus, invasive flora/fauna—and my love of candied, old-master opulence have a constant presence in my work. Through painting with attention to detail, I’ve become accustomed to the fact that nature itself, or anything living really, never totally allows you to have a perfectly idealized experience. Everything is always spewing, dripping, rotting a little. Similar to 17th century still-life paintings with those vibrant lusty fruits that show the light fuzz of beginning decay, I don’t see these works as allegorical depictions. To me it is more the realization that both the rot and the fruit are a textural attraction in their delicacy; both take the same concentration and care to paint.

The classic chiaroscuro darkness in still-life is a primordial soup, a pool of black that springs forth a decadent, and sometimes horrible, growth. I’ve always been attracted to the obsolete idea of spontaneous generation, all that awful stuff popping into existence for no reason. The paintings reflect this; they are more spontaneous generations than firmly rooted in actual living organisms.