Nicholas Schleif
Nicholas Schleif was born and raised in Comfrey, MN and received a BFA from Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, MN.
During his time there, he was student director of the on-campus art gallery, and also helped to curate the university's museum collection, and assisted in putting it on permanent display throughout the campus. He spent many years working with the human form, and would now classify himself as a non-traditional portrait artist.
He likes to refer to his pointillist portraits as “visual biographies”. In these pieces, he not only depict his subject’s visual likeness/physical form, but also incorporates the subject's legacy, and use it as the medium through which he exposes them – visually bringing them to life, through their life’s work.
Nicholas has done charity partnerships with organizations such as the Walter & Connie Payton Foundation. His work is part of permanent collections with civil rights organizations like The COFO Center at Jackson State University, the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute in Jackson MS, and the Betty Shabazz Center in New York. He has paintings in the the San Fransisco 49ers’ Levi Stadium, the Minnesota Vikings’ US Bank Stadium & TCO Performance Center Headquarters, the Milwaukee Bucks’ Fiserv Forum, as well as the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center.
