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October Issue 2007
City Art Gallery in Columbia, SC, Offers Works by Bruce Nellsmith
City
Art Gallery in Columbia, SC, will present the exhibition Bruce
Nellsmith: Oil Paintings/Working Drawing, on view from Oct.
4 and continuing through Nov, 10, 2007.
The exhibit features recent paintings and drawings
by Bruce Nellsmith, an award-winning artist and Chairman of the
Department of Art at Newberry College. Completed over the past
eighteen months, the works continue the artist's ongoing project
in abstracted cityscapes. Constituting memories and primarily
the experience of places, whether Atlanta or Rome, the paintings
serve as catalysts to an investigation of line, form and color.
The first element visitors will likely encounter in the exhibit
at City Art is color. Vivacious orange-reds mingle with orange-oches
and complimentary blues, while electric reds and browns interrupt
some cooler canvases of blues and greens.
"Atlanta feels like a red city to me," says Nellsmith, noting the presence of the city's heat, activity and smell. The vivid colors of the artist's paintings in part derive from his inclination to associate a palette of colors with a particular place. Columbia, he says, is "more yellow-orange with some blue-grey. I read New York as purple." Rome, the inspiration for some of the new works, feels orange and ochre to him. Those looking at the artist's work, however, should not try to read too literally into these canvases or search too deep for familiar physical landmarks within these associative color fields. These paintings are not visual transcriptions. Once started, the paintings become the artist's investigations into the materials of paint itself, a passionate exercise in expressionism.
Once committed to the first mark on the canvas, Nellsmith proceeds in a rapid, frenetic pace toward the work's completion. "Every stroke has to be exciting," he says, adding that while he is painting he's already ahead of himself, drawing his eyes to another place on the canvas. His process, which he describes as very physical, places him solidly within the expressionist camp - a "Hans Hofmann tempered by a dose of Cezanne," as he describes his work.
The
analogy to Hofmann and Cezanne reveals the artist's strong sense
of an artistic inheritance. Hofmann, serving as the founding father
and chief proponent of the New York school of abstract expressionism,
is known for his energy and motion. Certainly, Nellsmith's paintings
exude a similar feeling of speed and vitality. Yet, Nellsmith's
landscapes are often balanced with the repose that seem evocative
of Paul Cezanne's landscapes from Provence.
Nellsmith makes many drawings on location, and in a wide variety of media, and some will imply a starting point for the paintings. He also likes to set some distance of time and space between these drawings and the eventual paintings that may emerge from them once back in the studio. The point of departure could simply be a line or another element in a drawing that will prove fertile for further exploration in oil paint. He doesn't need a location to draw, he says, "All I need is something to draw with."
The richly colorful spaces and exciting active marks of these works derive from an artist who is well-schooled in the history and theory of art but who nevertheless appreciates the sense of immediacy and discovery of the process of painting. Though intellectually grounded in the traditions and formalism of painting, Nellsmith approaches each work on its own terms, a visual landscape that does not require verbal articulation.
Nellsmith received his BFA from the University of Georgia at Athens and an MFA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been selected for a number of exhibitions around the Southeast. His work is included in many private, state, and public collections.
For further information check our SC Commercial
Gallery listings, call the gallery at 803/252-3613 or visit (www.cityartonline.com).
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