Meet Nimah Gobir | Painter

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nimah Gobir and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nimah, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
​​My first memories of art-making are of my dad creating these two-page drawings where he would flip a page back and forth and the image would move. It was usually a person walking or a butterfly flapping its wings. I remember thinking that it was magical and I’ve held on to the belief that art making is a type of magic ever since. Being an artist is one of the ways I can be close to magic every day. It will always be amazing to me that I create things. I was fortunate enough to have art classes available every year at the public schools I attended.

I’m Black, first generation, and moved around a lot, so art-making is also the way that I understand myself as a blend of family members and cultures. I paint mostly family members and loved ones.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’ve always gravitated towards painting people. I love the way that people communicate with one another through their expressions or body language. I think that we understand ourselves through others. For me, painting is constantly trying to understand people through their relationships, whether it’s a relationship with me or another person. I specifically paint Black people and my family in an attempt to tease out the intricacy of Blackness. I try to explore how I fit into Blackness and understand Blackness in myself.

I like painting intimate and domestic spaces most of all. I think that rooms and homes are like portraits because you can tell a lot about someone from the stuff that is around them. I’m interested in homes as a site of private and everyday acts of care

I’m most proud of the solo show that I just closed at Johansson Projects in Oakland, California. It was a collection of work called SPOOLS and nearly every piece of work found a new home. A painting from the show also appeared in a NYTimes insert.

Becoming an artist was easy in the sense that creating feels really innate. Even when I’m struggling with a painting, I’m in love with problem solving and trying out different techniques. And there are ways in which being an artist is hard because the world privileges stable and steady incomes. A lot of people think of art-making as a hobby. Between student loans and healthcare, it can feel like being a full time artist is really unsustainable. I’ve had to supplement my art practice with other incomes. It’s a constant balancing act to make sure I’m making enough money to support myself and protecting my time so I can develop new and exciting work.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
For LA or the Bay Area? I was born in LA, but live in the Bay Area. I guess if we have a week there is no reason we can’t do both.

So I’ll caveat all of this by saying I’m vegetarian and my partner is vegan, so all of my food places are very veggie-focused. So in L.A. I always get vegan burgers, tater tots, and milkshakes at Monty’s. I love the breakfast burritos at Little Barn coffee house. Wanderlust Creamery has incredible ice cream in unique delicious flavors like mango sticky rice.

We would spend an entire day at a Korean spa, drinking slushies and then going into the steam rooms. We would of course swing through LACMA.

We’d eventually venture towards Newport Beach, but we’d stop by Costa Mesa first to go to Gypsy Den– I used to go there all the time when I was in college. On our way to the beach we’d grab Sidecar donuts.

We’d spend a day hiking in Laguna Beach because the views are amazing.
Then we’d drive up to the Bay Area. We’d get sandwiches at Irving subs and walk through Golden Gate Park to check out the windmill and the bisons. We’d see Ocean Beach and then catch dinner at Shizen for the best vegan sushi ever.

The next day we’d go to Oakland and check out the farmer’s market at Lake Merritt, stop by Walden Pond Books, go to Arizmendi for pizza and maybe catch a movie at the historic Grand Lake Theater. Hopefully we’d be there for an Oakland First Friday so we could walk through all of the galleries like Local Language and Johansson Projects.

We’d get donuts from Donut Farm in the morning and hike through the Piedmont Cemetery, which sounds creepy, but has incredible views.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Definitely my mom! My siblings and I were raised by my extraordinary Nigerian-born mom. The trope is that most immigrant parents push their kids to become doctors or lawyers, but my mom was always very supportive of me as an artist. She has an embarrassing amount of my old artwork to this day.

Website: www.nimahgobir.com

Instagram: @findingnimah

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimahgobir/

Image Credits
Jonathan Botkin