Irene Nelson is a painter, printmaker and ceramicist based in the San Francisco East Bay. Born in in New York City in 1951, Nelson moved to the Bay Area in the 1970’s where she initially pursued interests in photography, documentary filmmaking, and acting. After returning to art school, Nelson went on to establish a successful 30 year career as the founder of a boutique graphic design firm. The firm specialized in producing Annual Reports.
Since 2012, Nelson has engaged in a dedicated painting practice. Highlights include showing at the competitive San Francisco DeYoung Museum Open 2020, featured shows at Gearbox Gallery, and dozens of curated group shows. Publications include Crocker Kingsley 2022, 48 Pillars, Arc Gallery 2022, Artists of the Bay Area 2021, Spaces Between, Gearbox Gallery 2019, Hariban Awards 2015.
Her paintings, photo etchings and monoprints convey inquisitiveness, a sense of adventure, and the promise of something better ahead. Nelson’s zesty color palette and pared down shapes tumbling confidently through an easeful space combine to create a dynamic, hopeful environment. Nelson’s more recent ceramic work has begun an exploration of her shapes in three dimensional form.
Originally, from New York, I have spent most of my adult life living in the San Francisco Bay Area. My work is an osmosis of the influence of the New York Abstract artist attitude and the sensibility of light in the Bay Area landscape.
As an abstract painter I create impressions constructed from the thin line between memory and imagination. My gestural marks are organic and free from formula and conscious constraint. Whether painting, drawing or working with monotypes, my process is guided by a mix of intuition and tenacious experimentation. Compositions evolve as acts of discovery rather than having a planned destination.
My practice is a process of working through vulnerability to intimacy to strength and the belief that I am a part of something larger than myself.
Being an artist means that one is compelled to make work—to persevere, to exist in a place of not knowing and to welcome mistakes along the way. The materials and methods one chooses is wide open. The important aspects are to create something that comes from oneself, to experiment, to hopefully discover something in your own process. An artist makes things and at a certain point a practice develops.
There is a commitment to keep showing up to do the work, to learn about the work other artists are making, to engage in dialogue with other artists, to be open to using new materials, as we continually ask the question, What if?.
