Nadine Nothnagel

Nadine Nothnagel is a South African artist based in Wellington, Western Cape, whose practice transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary through an intuitive interplay of colour, form, and material. Working across ink, gouache, acrylic, oil, and mixed media, she embraces process and imperfection, allowing seasons, materials, and daily rhythms to shape her evolving visual language.

Formally trained in Surface Design and holding a PGCE in Visual Arts and Design, Nothnagel spent over a decade teaching art before returning fully to her own practice. This foundation continues to inform her sensitivity to materials and her belief in art as a means of close observation. While she still teaches from her home studio, her primary focus is the refinement and expansion of her artistic voice.

Her ongoing series, The Daily Extra-Ordinary, celebrates familiar objects through colour. Each work begins with a discarded paint swatch card, an industrial fragment that becomes both canvas and conceptual anchor. The selected hue sets the emotional tone and often inspires the title, positioning colour as the central storyteller.

Against this field, she isolates everyday objects such as eggs, dominoes, or chairs, removing them from context and reimagining them with quiet wit and clarity.

By contrasting the mechanical precision of the swatch with the intimacy of hand-painted imagery, Nothnagel creates works imbued with humour, poetry, and attentiveness. Through restraint and subtlety, she invites viewers to pause and rediscover the beauty embedded in the everyday.

Nadine Nothnagel is represented in Cape Town by The Artists Gallery.