Nick Gebhart

My attraction to art was nurtured from an early age living in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. I earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in painting from Rhode Island College, and later pursued a Master of Fine Arts at the New York Academy of Art, where I studied traditional methods as a realist painter.

After completing my studies at the Academy in 2015, I continued my journey as a representational painter in Brooklyn, NY. During that time, I discovered a deep appreciation for the beauty found in still lifes, landscapes, and portraiture.

In every painting, my goal is to capture the viewer’s attention through the seduction of light and to hold it with meticulous detail. Light serves as the driving force behind most representational art, and it plays a central role in my work. Historically, light has been a key element of artistic design, reaching new heights in the 16th and 17th centuries through masters such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. In their works, light was not merely illumination, it was emotion and narrative, a means to seduce the viewer and evoke feeling beyond the subject itself.

The dramatic interplay of light and shadow found in Baroque art, with its richness and contrast, continues to inspire and influence my own artistic practice.