November 2013

City Art Gallery in Columbia, SC, Offers Works by Bruce Nellsmith

City Art Gallery in Columbia, SC, will present Formal Structures and Memories, featuring works by Bruce Nellsmith, on view from Nov. 20 through Dec. 31, 2013. A reception will be held on Nov. 21, from 5-9pm, during Columbia’s Vista Lights celebration.

Nellsmith comments, “The time I spend in France each year has an undeniable impact on my work. In years past, this impact was most often seen in the choice of motif or subject matter, however, this past spring, its influence was on the way that I see the motif. Spending time in the colorful and light drenched Mediterranean village of Collioure, I began to appreciate the impact that this little seaside town had on the work of Derain and Matisse. It was in this southern village that Fauvism was invented.”

“Although I have always used color for its own sake in a formal, abstract way (and sometimes for its psychological impact), I began to use color and light as something solid, with weight,” adds Nellsmith. “Light, rather than simply lighting the façade of a building, began to tumble from the sky and fall on the street as if were too heavy to remain in the sky. Color fields became more substantial and strokes of paint more independent of one another. Line work began to not only define form, but find its way off of the form in an unbroken continuum and encapsulate space – air, light, nothingness was made as solid as a wall. Color would become investigatory and not tied so closely to nature. Lines would be used for their own lyrical qualities rather than defining shape or form.”

“All of this seemed to me to be the illogical, but natural progression that the structure or formal qualities in the work would need to take in order to continue to be capable of carrying the weight of the memories and feelings that I hold for a specific place in the natural world. It makes little difference whether the memory involves a cityscape in France or in Columbia, or a bridge over the marsh and creeks, or an abstraction that presumably was born in the confines of my studio. The need is to make paint the collation of memory, action, and formalism,” says Nellsmith.

For further information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, contact Wendyth Wells by calling 803/252-3613 or visit (www.cityartonline.com).

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