Red Brick Center for the Arts is thrilled to present a collection of paintings by Nicholas Ward, a rising star who is garnering increasing attention and accolades.

Ward’s work explores the mythologized image of the American West—a vision shaped less by historical fact and more by cinematic fantasy, collective memory, and personal dreaming. Reanimating fragments of subconscious narrative into surreal compositions of scale and form, Ward evokes a world that feels both uncanny and familiar, inviting viewers to question what is remembered, imagined, or invented. His paintings probe the porous boundary between truth and fiction, particularly in the context of 18th and 19th century frontier narratives, when storytelling, emotion, and the fragility of memory blurred the line between history and myth.

In this body of work, personal dreams fold into the larger mythic landscape of the West. By filtering these stories through the lens of his own dream life, he questions who gets to author history—and how easily it bends under the weight of imagination. The result is a series of paintings and sketches that blur not only the line between truth and fiction, but between private reverie and collective memory.