Art Exhibitions & Collections

Michelle Nixon’s solo exhibition The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People: Humanity through Layers of Watercolor is an exquisite marriage of skill and atmosphere. Her moody, impressionistic watercolor paintings evoke a host of emotions in the viewer as her confident mastery of the medium and the presence of bustling city-folk reveal themselves in the twelve cityscapes on view in the Center for Arts and Media at SLCC’s South City campus. As anyone who has dabbled knows, watercolor is an unforgiving medium that requires infinite patience, restraint and, above all, practice. Nixon’s elegant, minimalist strokes make mathematical precision seem effortless as the subtle perspective shifts of architecture are perfectly described with a remarkable economy of brushwork, and the figures who inhabit these scenes are rendered with extraordinary restraint and wonderful impressionistic omissions.

She explains "[w]atercolor lends itself well, not to expressing realistic detail, but to capturing the feeling - the impression - of the experience. In some ways it becomes an even more realistic representation, because it hits closer to the impression that we felt […] by exploring social concepts in my work, or conversely, the formalistic beauty of humanity I wrestle with the idea of the social aesthetic […] In my plein air, landscape, and cityscapes, it is the presence of human actors that create the intent of the piece. Correspondingly, it is the social space between the subjects, including the viewer, that charge my figurative work with meaning.”

Michelle Nixon earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Art with a double major in Sociology from Brigham Young University, later attaining a master's degree in the Sociology of Aesthetics. She is a signature member of the National Watercolor Society (NWS), Western Federation of Watercolor Societies (WFWS), and Utah Watercolor Society (UWS).

She has been juried into numerous national and international art exhibitions. Notably, Michelle was honored with the highest award at the National Watercolor Society's International Juried Open in 2022. Her achievements extend to receiving Award VX in NWS's International Juried Open in 2023 and Award XXII in 2024, and the Land of Enchantment Award in WFWS's 47th National Juried Exhibition.

In 2019, Michelle secured the top accolade at Utah's premier plein air event, Plein Air Paradise, marking the first instance a watercolorist received this distinction. She represented Utah for three years at the Springfield Museum of Art's Watercolor USA National Juried Exhibition. Her recognition includes an invitation to showcase a solo exhibition at the Covey Center for the Arts and participation in a three-year traveling exhibit organized by the Utah Division of Arts and Museums. She was featured in the Winter edition of Watercolor Artist Magazine in 2022, and again in a spread in the Fall edition this year

She currently resides in Hyde Park Utah with her husband, daughter, and four sons.