Nicole Nora is a Seattle-based painter interested in the ordinary things that make people feel connected to a place. Her current focus is Seattle parks and what they hold: changing seasons, native plants, everyday rituals, and the evolving relationship between people and place. Belonging and cyclicality run through everything she makes, shaped by her relationship to the Pacific Northwest and her Armenian background. Her goal during the residency is to push her painting toward something more experimental than her practice has been so far, and to discover how a painting can hold the feeling of an entire park rather than a single view. The aim is work that feels rooted in specific Seattle places and more clearly her own than what she’s made before.