For me to make art, I must be profoundly moved by an experience or thought. I share life stories through my work. My studio is my sanctuary to make art, free of outside influences and judgment of others. Being in a place that feels safe is important to me. My inner world is feminine; I select specific colors to evoke a feeling or luscious fabrics to create a veil, like a soft shield of protection. From that point, there is a pouring out of emotions where I expose my personal life’s journey. This vital process is the vehicle that helps to promote healing within and it is why I continue to make art.

Greg Nelson Art depicts ethereal California landscapes and intimate figures through multi-media paintings with a romantic vision of nature and a classical treatment of form. View my website at http://www.gregnelsonart.com

My work consists almost entirely of an on-going, "serial portrait" of my wife Colette Crutcher.  I began this project over 25 years ago when Colette was pregnant with our first child, and I wanted to record the physical and emotional changes she was undergoing.  Gradually I realized that this single focus on another person as subject had potential beyond the immediate circumstances of Colette's pregnancy.  I became intrigued with, or perhaps obsessed by, the possibility of depicting Colette as a whole person, through a multiplicity of images made over time; time being the dimension that is absent from a single portrait image.  Rather than dealing primarily with the biographical facts of her life, I want instead to convey her subjective experience, through the medium of her body, the outward expression of her inner self.  However, a portrait is, by definition, one person interpreting another person, scrutinizing from the outside an ever receding mystery, one which even in an entirely open hearted person like Colette, plays  a teasing game of hide and seek.   So the results of my efforts are always uncertain and provisional, full of gaps which I fill in with my own materials, making my portrait a kind of self-portrait.  In the end, what I have created is a kind of hybrid entity combining elements of both me and Colette.  My hope is that the viewer, who doesn't know either of us, comes away from my work with a sense of a powerful human presence, which is as good a way as any of describing my subjective experience of Colette in my life.

Color, tone and hue predominate these works that exploit the inherent movement of oil paint. My process begins with color, building up layers opacity and translucense to explore the sublties and range of tone. The complexities and richness supersede the constrained pallette. These layered, atmospheric spaces flow through tonal shifts until they intersect. These juxtapositions further enhance the color dynamics and create ambiguous places.  The abstract enviroments created illustrate spaces that always captivate me; the places where man and nature, land and sky, and reality and perception intersect.

My work is a reflection of my love for life. It's about the color, adventure, exploration, spiritual jouneys, inquiry,whimsical, fantasy, all the while accompanied by a wonderful musical soundtrack. My art to me is always evolving from my creative passion which results in a tactile compostion for others to enjoy.

I have always been interested in realistic renderings in the traditional sense of figurative work and still life.  I have discovered that what appeals to me is the three-dimensional rendering of form through intense color saturation and shadowing.  By moving away from my previous approach to representational art, I now focus on the individual shape or form that provides me with a feeling of freedom.  I am fascinated that by just focusing on individual shapes and forms the paintings develop into a rich blend of realism and abstraction.

A basic shape in and of itself may not convey anything but as I construct shape upon shape one leading to the other a depth and complexity emerge and coalesce into a whole.
I find this process to be a metaphor for so many things that we may not understand.  Individual instances that may not make sense or have any meaning come to life and begin to makes sense. 

The solitary evolves and grows, complex and full with mystery which results in a complete story, subject to interpretation, but unable to pinpoint a beginning or an end.

I am an artist interested in the visual psychic story of the human race, our struggle to understand universal emotions that cross over to all genders, races, and cultures. Our stories are born in history. My ceramic sculpture is about MEMORIES, in homage to our ancestors. Visual images of trees, roots, bones, locks, & chains are metaphors for family, secrets, stories, growth, life, death, both past and in the future. I see my sculptures as “offerings” to deepen the engagement between remembrance and (un) forgetting. 

My printmaking images are political. My objective is to challenge the myths of human issues and record changes with positive visual images that can help us view the world as a global effort. I often like to make very pleasing and colorful images to bait the viewer to SEE only to realize the narrative is a ‘warning’.

My paintings are a cross over of both memories & political and tend to be more abstract. I am dedicated to the visual arts as a way of giving back to our social environment with cultural images that enhance and deepen our care for human beings.