Born in Detroit Michigan, Niagara is a painter and musician. Her paintings derive mainly from the Lowbrow art movement. She was the lead vocalist of the bands Dark Carnival and Destroy All Monsters, both proto-punk rock bands. Niagara's style can be described loosely as Pop Art. She uses bright colors, portrays her figures as caricatures, and includes comic strips of words as if spoken by the figures. She prints with acrylic on canvas. Niagara was enamored of John R. Neill when she was still a child. John illustrated works by L. Frank Baum and others. Niagara was greatly influenced by Roy Lichtenstein who utilized the comic panel and cartoon style. She was also influenced by the “lowbrow” aesthetic which evolved in Southern California in the 1970s and was epitomized by Robert Williams.
Her later painting style was also influenced by the promotional materials for Destroy All Monsters, Xerox prints, and the early 1970s works with collage; her figurative, bold images are evidence of that. Niagara also incorporates the influences of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in addition to the overt Pop Art stylistic tropes. She also borrowed ideas from the Decadent movement which was also influenced by Gothic fiction. Her works, with their floral-inspired belle époque women of Toulouse-Lautrec and whiplash lines, are imprinted by Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau was the first art style that she identified with. She then discovered Decadent Art, the Pre-Raphaelite movement: pale, druggy, haunted women. She read constantly and was deep into Dickens and Dostoyevsky.
