Nicole Charbonnet uses stereotypical images of America as a way of exploring our past and present perceptions of ourselves and others, as well as our identity as members of a society.

Nicole Charbonnet uses stereotypical images of America as a way of exploring our past and present perceptions of ourselves and others, as well as our identity as members of a society. For Charbonnet, painting serves as a metaphor for the phenomenon of recollection. Her process of painting mimics or simulates the process of memory with its numerous layers and textures, resulting in paintings that both illuminate the past and encourage interpretations that function as starting points in and of themselves. Charbonnet says of her process, “Whether painting images or abstract gestures, my paintings are textural and built up with layers over time. The superimposition of textures, images, collage, words and paint create surfaces that retain or reveal a memory of preexisting stages, resulting in a palimpsest in which some images, shapes or words are obfuscated, while others remain visible however shaped by previous or subsequent gestures and events.”