Skip to content
Otherworldly is an understatement when describing artist Nouel Riel. Her work takes you on an emotional journey or texture, movement, and dimensions. She evokes the guiding entities of beyond and within. She makes you dive deep with her abstract visions. By allowing you to dive within yourself through her work, she provokes you to understand herself more, in turn - reconnecting the truth that we are all one and individual at the same time. Her work is the physical of the physical-less, so to speak. Through meditation and vision, she constructs the emotions into form. Binding a relationship between viewer, artist, and the unknown and hope to be closer to understanding the truth behind illogical reality.
Who are you?
Nouel Riel. I'm an abstract mixed media artist. I believe I am everything and nothing at the same time.
Why do you make your work?
I make work to understand the internal and external mystery that is oneself; the real wild journey of being a human -
For me the artistic process is the combination of a construction worker, alchemist, and psychologist.
Some experience or vision arises in me that I want to understand further, so I start to work fairly non emotionally by
tearing down a structure or building one up to dissect and magnify as many angles of the experience as possible.
By doing this I can start eliminating unknowns to get at the abstract experience and pull it down into a
3rd dimensional form to then look at it in the round and experience it on a more tangible level.
Bringing the abstract into physical form, in my opinion, is a necessary but inherently dumbed down or logical
means of understanding the unseen/ intangible/ illogical, but it's the easiest means of communicating with people,
because they can see and touch it. By dumbed down I mean it in a literal way, because once the abstract takes a
physical form or language it is inherently no longer what it actually is. It is filtered and altered, but the impossibility
of this task is endlessly fascinating to me and what keeps me interested in doing it. I always think, "How close can
I get to conveying this thing that can never even be spoken?" Like experiencing love, for instance.
What do you believe in?
I believe in relationships. I believe of they are the most important thing we can experience.
The only thing I have learned thus far is the moment you admit to yourself that you don't truly "know" something
a real knowledge starts to present itself.
Name one thing you say yes to?
One thing you say no to?
One thing you say no to?
Yes to Internal Evolution.
No to Abuse.
No to Abuse.
What change would you like to see?
A willingness to drop the logical mind.
Name one thing that makes you happy?
My best friends.
How would you describe your personal routine ?
I wake up, make coffee and stare at the paintings I was working on the day before until they tell me what to do
to them and then I start working.
What did you want to be as a child?
An Archaeologist.
Can you remember one solid piece of advice you've gotten for the growth of your business / work ?
You are a professional. Art is your business. Start treating it that way.
If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be?
All of my friends are super inspiring. I collaborate with them a lot and have an ongoing collaboration with Buckley.
For people I haven't met or actually created with yet I have a million people on my list, though a lot of them are dead.
Some that first come to mind are ~ Anselm Kiefer. Jungian therapists. Scientists. Archaeologists.
John Galliano. Max Richter and Nils Frahm. Paolo Roversi. Bill Henson. My friend Avery (Kymia Arts - https://www.kymiaarts.com)
is an actual alchemist which is one of the most inspiring things for me and most similar to what I do, so more Alchemists for sure.
This is random, but I've spent hundreds of hours alone on the road and listen to The War On Drugs the most, so
making photographs for their music would be radical.
Who is one person in culture that you feel is making positive and inspiring change ?
Sadhguru.