Art and the mind: Nicolette Macolino pursues both painting and psychology

After a year battling a global pandemic, we know the feeling behind this posture: the forehead pressing against laced fingers, the lips a straight line, eyes downcast and unfocused.

Junior Nicolette Macolino encapsulated the feeling of “Melancholy” in a painting of the same name, which recently won an honorable mention at the Best of SUNY exhibition. On display in Albany, the exhibit features more than 80 pieces of art selected from across the entire State University of New York system.

Art and Design Professor Natalija Mijatovic submitted the entry for Macolino. The 24-by-30-inch oil painting was created in Mijatovic’s ARTS 340: Intermediate Painting class, part of a series of four self-portraits that portray different emotional states.

“I wanted to show different emotions with different body language and little subtleties in my face, as well as the different colors,” Macolino said.

“Melancholy” was the first of the set, painted at the time when people began to emerge from quarantine. In some senses, it was the easiest emotion to depict; sadness is easier to detect through body language and facial expression than “Admiration,” one of her later portraits, she reflected.

Between “Melancholy” and “Admiration” lie “Boredom” and “Contentment.” “Boredom” — which builds on her pandemic experience — actually shares structural elements with “Admiration” in terms of hand placement and body position, but the colors and other subtleties differentiate the emotional experiences therein.

In addition to the Albany exhibit, two of Macolino’s pieces — “Admiration” and “Boredom” — are on display at the Roberson Museum in downtown Binghamton. While the moods in her self-portraits shift, art has remained a constant in Macolino’s life: she began attending art classes in her Long Island neighborhood when she was just 6 years old, and began painting a year or so after that.

While she has experimented with other media, she has loved oil painting since her junior year of high school.

“My first oil painting was of my grandma, and I really just fell in love with the texture. The way oil paint works, it stays wet a bit longer, so you’re able to mix things,” she explained.

Her inspirations include American painter Chuck Close, who creates realistic portraits using colors that appear mixed at a distance; however, a closer view reveals the paintings to be comprised of distinct splotches of color. Macolino uses elements of this approach in her own work, she said.

Helping others

Look at the masterful mixture of texture and color in Macolino’s self-portrait series, and you just might pick up two essential elements that shape her work: her twin majors in painting and psychology. If art forms an integral part of her identity, so too does helping others.

During this past year, she participated in Mental Health Outreach Peer Educators (M-HOPE), a group of student ambassadors who engage and educate the campus community on topics of mental health and wellness. They gave campus presentations on topics ranging from stress management and self-care to suicide prevention and mental health advocacy, informing students about the resources available to them both on campus and off.

“We made an entire new presentation on COVID coping skills,” she said. “There are a lot of changes that we’ve all been going through.”

Even in the midst of a global pandemic, Macolino appreciates Binghamton’s community atmosphere, and the connections she has been able to foster in the classroom and beyond. Professors who have made a difference include Mijatovic, who inspired Macolino to become a painting major and push her art to the next level.

“I definitely was kind of looking for that art community within Binghamton. It can be hard to build close connections, especially now with the pandemic,” Macolino said. “Working with her these past two semesters has really helped create that feeling of community, and it has just made my Binghamton experience even better.”

One of the signature values of Harpur College of Arts and Sciences is the opportunity to discover and pursue your many talents, and use them to create something both uniquely yours and universally felt, Mijatovic said. She considers Macolino’s art a perfect example of this: beautifully rendered, complex and intimate.

“In the time of this global crisis and the struggle for sense and sanity, we turned to art. Virtual tours of museums offering thousands of years’ worth of art always made in the adverse, impossible conditions from the prehistoric caves, to contemporary guerrilla street art… theater plays, online concerts, homemade music performances,” she reflected. “Art does what it does best: it heals, it loves, it offers truth and hope.”

Along with fine arts major Maya Madden, Macolino is a recipient of this year’s Carolyn A. Novogrodsky Memorial Art Award, established by Bernice Mednick Reinhardt ’69, in memory of her niece.

This summer, Macolino will work on a new portrait project — this time of her family, featuring scenes of home. Beyond that, she doesn’t know quite where her Binghamton experience will take her — a career in art therapy is one possibility — but she’s determined to enjoy the journey.

“I’m doing what I love for right now and I’ll see where it takes me,” she said.