Nilé Livingston

“Graphic design, with its commercial appeal, is about external communication, while my painting is a meditative practice for my spirit. These two disciplines require me to use opposite parts of myself, but make me feel whole.”

Nilé Livingston is an award-winning visual artist and graphic designer. A fourth-generation Philadelphian, she often credits Jane Golden and Mural Arts Philadelphia for inspiring, encouraging, and recognizing her grand-scale art. Her style is marked by vibrant colors that sometimes drip and splatter on interior and exterior walls, signs, and banners. Nilé has captured famous people like Patti LaBelle and Malcolm Jenkins but she has also transformed ordinary people from West Philly into larger-than-life icons. Acclaim for Nilé’s work has come from Rad Girls, an organization that celebrates women's accomplishments, and from The Colored Girls Museum, which is dedicated to the history of black girls in America. The artist-entrepreneur runs her own graphic design business, Creative Repute, LLC. The spiritual-creative fills her website and blog with a chronicle of her development, her views on social justice, and the occasional vegan recipe.  

where do art and your discipline meet?

“When I first graduated from college, I had difficulty finding work. I put together a volunteer project with a friend wherein we solicited materials from hardware stores to construct an image that reflected the children in the community. The mural demonstrated that art is really about problem solving, so I applied this firsthand knowledge to my own issue—finding work using my talent—and developed a graphic design business, Creative Repute, LLC.

Graphic design has a commercial appeal because it is about external communication which matched well with my love for painting which is an embodied, meditative practice that works with my spirit. The fact that I have these two worlds or disciplines that require me to use different, opposite parts of myself makes me feel whole because they, ultimately, form a whole.”

Biography:

Nile Livingston is an award winning visual artist and graphic designer. Her work has been recognized by Rad Girls, an organization that celebrates women's accomplishments, The Colored Girls Museum, the only institution in the US exclusively dedicated to the history of black girls in America, and Mural Arts Philadelphia, the nation's largest public art program.