Known for his urban landscapes, Nick Savides learned to paint from his mother at three years old and hasn’t stopped since. Inspired by the works of Edward Hopper, the quiet energy within his art captures a palpable sensation of both light and place. The paintings’ range encompasses urban scenes and architecture, landscapes and nature, and the figure and portraiture.
After studying under Paul Georges at Brandeis University, Mr. Savides began a career as a Realist painter. Starting out, he focused on paintings of people in interior settings, drawing on Johannes Vermeer as an influence. It was then that the effects of light became ─ and stayed ─ a key ingredient in his paintings. The paintings capture a sense of time and place with a certain understatement, as many of the titles would suggest, such as Summer Evening, Tompkins Square Park or West 14th Street at Sunset. They grip you by inviting you in with the familiar and showing you more than you expected. As Val Schaffner writes, “Beyond the carefully rendered beauty, complexity, and calm of his art, there is mystery: a sense of something about to be discovered.”
Since his first solo show in 1980, Mr. Savides has exhibited in many group and solo shows in New York City, as well as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Long Island, Upstate New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, Wisconsin, and Toronto. His work is included in numerous collections, and was featured on June Middleton’s “Minding Your Business,” which aired on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network in 2010. Twice published by Nabi Press, he had retrospectives of his work at the Berkeley College Gallery in 2012 and Union Arts Center in 2023, was selected for the cover of the 2015 William & Mary Review, and has been published in ArtVoices Art Books’ 2016 “101 Contemporary Artists” and the John Natsoulas Press’ 2018 “10th Annual Art of Painting”, the August 2021 American Art Collector, and amNY, March 2024. He was the winner of Edward Hopper House’s #HopperSpring competition in 2017. He recently had a solo exhibit at Bowery Gallery in New York, and his work is also in the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program. He has recently been featured on Corrine Basabe’s “Corrine’s Picks”.
Nick Savides lives and works in Brooklyn.
