A'Driane Nieves San Antonio, Texas, USA, b. 1982

A’Driane Nieves was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1982.

A visual artist and writer, A’Driane Nieves is a U.S. Air Force veteran and the founder of an arts nonprofit and art magazine. Nieves is a self-taught painter of over a decade. At the urging of her therapist, she began using painting as a form of art therapy in 2011 during her recovery from postpartum depression and following her later diagnosis of bipolar disorder. This initial experimentation led to her using abstract expressionist painting as a way to overcome the impacts of childhood abuse, specifically emotional suppression. Influenced by Joan Mitchell, Cy Twombly, Bernice Bing, and early Black abstractionist painters ranging from Alma Thomas to Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Nieves’ paintings offer space for her own and others' quiet reflection and contemplation. She credits both the writing and visual components of her practice with helping her to find her voice and creating space for her to safely release long-buried emotions. Her interdisciplinary practice focuses on the physical, epigenetic, psychological, and social-emotional impacts of trauma—inherited, historical or ancestral, personal —exposing how it shapes, alters, and redefines identity over the course of our lives.

Her intuition driven process draws heavily on memories, emotions, and experiences from both the past and present. Nieves often completes a painting in one sitting, relying on physical movement and music to channel her inner truths and rememberings.

Through abstract forms and composition and expressive mark making, she gives visible shape to the internal biological and emotional processes of adaptation, recovery, healing, and transformation. Nieves' work allows her to carve out—and take up—space where the fullness of her humanity as a Black, queer, neurodivergent woman can be expressed without retribution. It is her hope that holding space in her work for expressing her fullest self encourages others to do the same.

In 2018, Nieves founded Tessera Arts Collective, a not-for-profit serving women and non-binary abstract artists of color.Nieves' paintings are on view at public institutions and in private collections across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Her work was recently acquired by Dangxia Art Space in Beijing and the Rennie Museum in Vancouver, Canada.