About

Nila Devaney is interested in the intersection between people and creativity. As an oil painter and muralist, she is deeply inspired by the Philadelphia community that surrounds her, feeling in awe of how gathering takes place—both in public and intimate spaces. Nila believes in celebration, with an understanding that celebration is interwoven with grief and other complexities. To honor this, she paints people together. In her paintings are unknown angels she’s invented, as well as people that have been in her life in one way or another -- a person forgotten but familiar, a close friend, a stranger she passed on the street. Nila compiles these faces into compassionate imagined spaces, thinking about the way individuals decorate and display themselves, and the larger landscape created when people collect together.

 

Nila is also an experienced educator with a background in youth arts and community event planning, and a member of the West Philadelphia mural collective, Marigold Murals. Their love of public art is influenced by their time with Precita Eyes Muralists (San Francisco) and Amber Art & Design (Philadelphia), through which they learned about the power of vibrant, large-scale community murals. Some other influences are: noticing the way people accidentally form tableaus at bus-stops, wind in the trees, bodies of water, and listening to parts of a song as a car drives by your window—all the unexpected symbols.