1985–2025

“My work is meant to evoke the romance and sadness of nostalgia: a time that we long for but will never obtain. I recreate old photographs in a loose, dream-like style with simple compositions to represent the fading memories of loved ones.”

Elaine Niccole “Nikki” Hemphill wrote this artist statement for this book just a few days before she passed away in March 2025 from kidney disease.

Hemphill was born in Harrison and loved art even as a child. She earned a degree in studio art from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, graduating with honors in December 2008. She had a strong emphasis in drawing, painting and sculpture and is best known for her paintings depicting images from the 1930s through the 1950s using an Impressionistic-like style.

Two of these images, The Majorette and The Murray Lodge, were exhibited at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., as part of the Women to Watch exhibit entitled, Body of Work: New Perspectives in Figure Painting, from July 2 to September 12, 2010. Other artists included in the exhibition were sponsored by NMWA committees from Georgia, the Greater Kansas City Area, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont and Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in the United Kingdom.

Promotional materials from the Washington exhibit stated, “Her inventive medium — pastel on wood panel — provides a space for reinterpreting old family photographs. Playing with the detail of her figures, she evokes the duality of memory which can seem equally vivid and hazy.”

“I work on wood because I want a surface that reflects the age of my source images,” wrote Hemphill in exhibit materials. “The grain of wood, which I sometimes let show through, complements the classical quality of the imagery.”

Arkansas Committee president Joey Halinski accompanied 23-year-old Hemphill to NMWA for the exhibition opening. “As I watched a young Nikki Hemphill speak about her work and inspirations, I was struck by her solid body of work and the setting in the Arkansas Room of NMWA, which was funded by the Arkansas Committee,” wrote Halinski in 2010. “The lineage of Arkansas women celebrated during the opening reception was both impressive and moving. Despite being one of the youngest artists in the exhibit, Nikki had the crowd in her hand describing the process of applying layer after layer of black and white pastels on wood panels interpreting old photographs of her family and scenes in Arkansas. Our founders would have been proud, as I was.”

Seven of Hemphill’s pieces were included in an Arkansas Women to Watch exhibition that traveled across the state throughout 2011.

“It was amazing to watch her work,” said Greg Williams, Hemphill’s partner for more than 20 years. “There were a lot of nights of her sitting in the floor dutifully working with pastels — I have no idea how many she went through. Building a nine-foot tornado out of chicken wire, scrap metal, and broken glass was also a fun project. Our hands looked like they went through a meat grinder, but it was worth it in the end.

“She was a truly lovely person,” he said. “I know everyone says that about their loved ones, but I have never heard anyone say a bad word about her. Having her work exhibited at NMWA was definitely her proudest accomplishment in life.”