January 19, 2015.

Occasionally on this blog I’d like to highlight other artists and illustrators whose work I admire (and aspire to!) For this first installment of an Artist Shout-Out, I’m featuring an artist who I’ve followed for several years now: Nikki McClure. Her work is unique in the fact that her only art “tool” is an x-acto knife and she literally carves her images out of a single sheet of black paper. The resulting images are “painstakingly intricate and beautiful paper cuts”, as her website puts it. Her subject matter tends toward themes of motherhood, children, nature and sustainability, all themes that deeply resonate with me. I find myself particularly taken with her designs that include hands or feet – they seem to capture something within the human spirit that is very real and honest – the beauty and difficulty of everyday life. I hope you enjoy seeing Nikki’s images as much as I do. To view more of her work, visit her website: www.nikkimcclure.com.