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Nic Palmer is an artist working at the intersection of indie songwriting and visual art. Originally from rural New South Wales, she now lives on the state’s North Coast. A four-time finalist in the Australian Songwriting Awards (3 x Top 30), with her music now played on radio around the world, Nic has taken an unconventional path to finding her musical voice. She grew up on a cattle and goat farm near Tamworth, where her earliest memory of music is sitting beside her mother on long drives to piano lessons held on another nearby property. At eighteen, Nic attended agricultural college — an unlikely setting for a shy, introspective painter to discover songwriting. She learned guitar in the quiet corners of her dorm room, often writing and singing only when no one could hear. What began as a private outlet slowly grew into a solid body of work. It took Nic over a decade to find her voice musically. Growing up in a home where being “seen and not heard” was the norm, she found freedom in painting, where “you don’t have to speak.” Over time, the sense of vocal freedom of expression began to flow through her songs. Her lyrics reflect lived experiences, often with a tongue in cheek approach. Now based in Northern NSW, Nic continues to blend her visual art with her storytelling as a songwriter. Collaboration has become a key part of her practice, bringing the communal spirit of recording an album into her visual art projects. Her work — whether on canvas or in song — is considered, poetic, and sometimes a little bit punk or off the wall. Her influences include artists like Bjork, Daniel Johnston and Kurt Cobain, while others have described her sound to be similar to Courtney Barnett (AUS), Sarah McLeod (The Superjesus AUS), Best Coast (US) and Sonic Youth (US). Nic performs live across the Northern Rivers region — solo, as a duo, or with her band — with plans to travel to new venues and states in the year ahead.