Nissa Kauppila was born and raised in the small, rural town of Monkton, Vermont, USA. She holds both a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.Ed. from the University of Vermont.
Expanding on her sense of curiosity, while exploring the unsettling and concrete, Kauppila has found painting the nature of flight and life a rewarding exercise in rediscovery. Her immersion in Chinese traditional art has awakened a sense of detail and fragility; her work explores the use of line and color as tendrils of tension while embodying a sense of wonderment for the natural and industrial worlds. Kauppila reaches beyond perception and disintegrates her subjects in ways that are not actual in her works in traditional Chinese watercolor and ink on traditional Chinese rice paper. She challenges the notion of context, forcing the viewer to confront the abrupt beauty of life and death through the explosive movements in color, line and depth.
Her paintings have been showcased internationally, in Macau, Hong Kong, New York, London, Singapore, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hamburg, Taipei, South Korea, and Guangzhou in the last few years, with current exhibitions and representation in Vermont, New York City, Barcelona, China, and Singapore.
