Ice Mountain
Acrylic on canvas painting with gold leaf by Niki Broyles. Niki worked everyday, steadily and silently, for many hours at a time seated at a table with the canvas lying flat. At times she used a magnifying lamp that arched over the painting. She wore thick glasses that magnified her eyes to an unusually large size. This enabled her to work in minute detail. She painted intensely all day, and gardened in the afternoon. Music was usually playing on the record player and she burned sweet incense.
The Drop
Although almost all of Niki’s artwork pre-dates The Power of Myth, published in 1988, our copy of the book was treasured in our home and re-read over the years by me, my grandma and my mom. Joseph Campbell believed that artists are a culture’s mythmakers and that a new mythology could unite the planet and celebrate our oneness. For Campbell, mythology offered more than life lessons, it held magic. A myth shows us our spiritual potentialities and “Through contemplating these we evoke their powers in our lives.”
Man, Lion, Bird
Acrylic on canvas painting by Niki Broyles.: “I began writing my books in 2015 when my mom was still alive; she passed away two years later. As I worked with the paintings on my computer, I loosely grouped about 100 works by color and theme. A magical story began to take shape…Although she didn’t have collections in mind when she created the individual pieces, when I showed her the idea of Seven Lands, she looked into my eyes and said “Yeah!”, her familiar word of encouragement from my childhood.The first land was the Nile, the desert home of the Babylonians, Assyrians and Egyptians… with pleading lions, unusual beasts and echoes of Gilgamesh.” From The Egg and the Unicorn book by Audrey Broyles.Acrylic on canvas painting by Niki Broyles.: “I began writing my books in 2015 when my mom was still alive; she passed away two years later. As I worked with the paintings on my computer, I loosely grouped about 100 works by color and theme. A magical story began to take shape…Although she didn’t have collections in mind when she created the individual pieces, when I showed her the idea of Seven Lands, she looked into my eyes and said “Yeah!”, her familiar word of encouragement from my childhood.The first land was the Nile, the desert home of the Babylonians, Assyrians and Egyptians… with pleading lions, unusual beasts and echoes of Gilgamesh.” From The Egg and the Unicorn book by Audrey Broyles.
Fish Fairy
Niki had the ability to depict a pure and natural essence of being. Her fairies aren’t mischievous, coy, dark or sexy. They are spiritual beings, elementals, or, as she called her figures “imaginings”. For me (her daughter Audrey), the art elevates our awareness above the machinations of earthly existence, if only briefly, to give us a glimpse of the divine.
Falling leaves at 7 o’clock
In the early 1970s, Niki was a young mother and created her own fairytale realm in the Oakland Hills on Castle Drive. She painted daily with controlled abandon, expressing her feelings, sense of humor, memories and ideas, and exploring the meaning of it all through the prismatic lens of the budding New Age movement…Her silly antics, spiritual nature, creativity and warmth touched circles of people in Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco, everyone from neighbors, teachers and family friends to the many acquaintances she met through her artwork.” (From Book 2, Now It’s Frog Tricks by Audrey Broyles)