Dona Nelson, 2024
Text by Terry Myers
84 pages
Published by Locks Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Dona Nelson: Selected Paintings, 2019-2023
ISBN: 979-8-9892387-1-2
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Published on the occasion of the gallery's first solo exhibition with the renowned painter Dona Nelson (b. 1947), Nelson has been recognized as one of the most technically innovative painters since the 1970s.
Nelson’s gestural, richly complex compositions demonstrate a rigorous commitment to exploring the possibilities of material invention. Since 2003, the artist has been making double-sided paintings displayed on steel stands, liberating their canvases from the wall. These paintings are novel in the way that each side is distinct yet “strongly interconnected, both conceptually and artistically” as put by art critic Brooks Adams. Nelson initially works on each canvas from above, laying them face down on milk creates without looking at the underside. In a process of staining and soaking with fluid acrylics and then subsequently re-stretching the canvas, each material and technique is extended to its maximum potential. “Material is intelligent, more intelligent than meanings I or others might ascribe to my painting,” says Nelson.
