ARCMANORO NILES

Early Years

Born in Washington, DC but now based in Brooklyn, New York, Arcmanoro Niles studied at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and the Washington Studio School. He followed this with periods at Montgomery Community College’s School of Art and Design (2010), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (BFA, 2013), New York Academy of Art (MFA, 2015) and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (artist in residence, 2018).

Arcmanoro Niles: Artworks

Arcmanoro Niles’s paintings, with subjects often drawn from memories, or photographs of friends and relatives, depict snatches of everyday life in vivid hues. He started using family pictures and childhood memories as references when his grandparents died while he was an undergraduate student.

Niles’s classical training introduced him to the idea of chiaroscuro, creating drama via light and shade. He layers vibrant purples, pinks, oranges and greens—a practice he adopted in 2015 after feeling frustrated at not being able to achieve the depth of tonality in skin tone he felt reflected his subjects. The body hair of the subjects of Niles’s works is often rendered in glitter.

Also around 2015, he began including characters called “seekers” in his work: small characters and gremlinesque figures that represent human desires—some are depicted having sex, another self-harms.

• I Never Said I’m Sorry but I Meant To (2025) moves away from Niles’s usual acrylics and oils, instead combining watercolour and pastel on paper to create a couple’s moment of tenderness.
• In I Don’t Keep Liquor Here (I’ve Been Learning How To Do It All The Hard Way) (2022), Niles subverts traditional ideas of still life by picturing a selection of processed foods on a set of serving trays.
• Does a Broken Home Become a Broken Family (2019), shows Niles himself, demonstrating separation from his mothers, sister and nephew via a kitchen countertop and a vertical white line.

Arcmanoro Niles: Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Times Ain’t What I’d Thought They’d Be: The Stars Don’t Shine Like Before, Vielmetter, Los Angeles (2025—2026)
• When There’s Nothing I Can Do: I Go To My Heart, Lehmann Maupin, New York City, New York (2025)
• I Guess By Now I’m Supposed To Be A Man: I’m Just Trying To Leave Behind Yesterday, UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, California (2020)
• Revisiting The Area, Rachel Uffner, New York City, New York (2018)

Select Group Exhibitions

• A Nation of Artists, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2026)
• Space is the Place, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California (2026)
• The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today, Smithsonian Museum of Art, Washington DC (2026)
• A New Subjectivity 1979/2024, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York (2024-2025)

Further Reading

• Arcmanoro Niles’s website
• Arcmanoro Niles’s Instagram
• Review of Arcmanoro Niles exhibition at Lehman Maupin, Brooklyn Rail (2022)
• Arcmanoro Niles’s artist page, Lehman Maupin

Arcmanoro Niles FAQs

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