Nicola Mountney

Nicola Mountney is from London. She worked for a major London costumiers, specialising in period costume for film and television from the 1600’s to the early 1960’s. Here she created and mounted many costume exhibitions in museums and historic houses throughout Europe and the USA, before moving to...

Nicola Mountney is from London. She worked for a major London costumiers, specialising in period costume for film and television from the 1600’s to the early 1960’s. Here she created and mounted many costume exhibitions in museums and historic houses throughout Europe and the USA, before moving to Tuscany in 2006 where she ran a Buddhist retreat centre in the Apennine mountains not far from Florence.
nicola spent 10 years studying and instructing Tibetan Buddhist thangka (scroll) painting, where there is a strong emphasis on precision, colour and detail. In the course of her training she became interested in the often highly complex landscapes in ancient thangka paintings. Taking tiny fragments of these landscapes she uses them as a base to create a unique style. her landscapes abound with mountains, streams and foliage where Viewers are transported to her imaginary landscapes. she has since moved away from thangka painting, but This background along with travels to asia have led her in the direction of building bridges between traditional and contemporary art and in doing so creating a fusion of East and West.
Nicola is greatly inspired by the Milanese artist Guiseppe Castiglione (Lang Shining), 1688-1766 who travelled to China as a Jesuit Missionary. Castiglione went on to become a court painter to the Emperors, incorporating Western-style painting into Chinese art and in doing so became one of the greatest court painters in China.
More recently nicola has taken the traditional style of painting asian rock formations and developed them further into abstract forms using contemporary colours.
Nicola exhibits in England and Italy. She has collectors in Europe, Asia and USA.