Collection: Nicole Lancaster

Nicole Lancaster is a mixed media artist whose practice is rooted in material exploration, visual archaeology, and the quiet thrill of discovery. She holds a Master of Art Education from William Carey University and an MFA from Mississippi College, where her work deepened its focus on process, risk, and the poetic potential of materials.

From an early age, Lancaster was drawn to the role of explorer—part Indiana Jones, part archeologist—an impulse that continues to shape her studio practice. Treasure hunting, both literal and metaphorical, is central to her work. She is captivated by the overlooked and the peripheral: an unexpected contour at the edge of a sheet of paper, a fleeting image revealed through translucency, or a subtle shift in surface that rewards close looking. These moments function as hidden artifacts within the work, inviting viewers into a slower, more intimate encounter.

Lancaster works across media and resists allegiance to a single method, allowing each piece to determine its own process. She consistently returns to encaustic, drawn to its tactile depth and capacity for preservation, much like an archival surface. Her material choices reflect a reverence for the natural world and its inherent design intelligence, incorporating beeswax, wood panels, handmade papers, and natural fibers. These elements echo her long-standing fascination with fossils, antique objects, and printed ephemera—not for their historical function alone, but for their visual harmony, imperfect geometry, and quiet endurance over time.

Her work is informed by the formal investigations of artists such as Jasper Johns and Richard Diebenkorn, as well as by her academic research into the relationship between personality and risk-taking in art. This inquiry manifests in a practice that balances intuition with structure, excavation with restraint.

Lancaster currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Art at William Carey University, where she continues to research, teach, and create work that treats the studio as a site of discovery—one where materials, memory, and meaning are carefully unearthed rather than imposed.