DONA NELSON

Dona Nelson’s work is rooted in the very fundamentals of what a painting is. Throughout her process, she lets the medium itself dictate the form, using its basic components: canvas, paint, stretcher. Working from both sides of the canvas, and often stretching and re-stretching it several times before deciding what is front or back, she stains, soaks and pours paint, sometimes forcing it through incisions or hosing down the canvas with water. The stretcher, equally affected, becomes an integral part of the painting/object, either adding another surface, or lingering as an imprint if the stretcher is removed. She articulates herworks further with strips of fabric soaked in acrylic medium, and painted string poked through the canvas. Regarding the two-sidedness, Nelson says, ‘That’s the process I’ve found that works best for me, soaking paint through the canvas, using fluid acrylics and acrylic flow release. The painting on the back comes into existence without my seeingit. The backs are received paintings, like the back of March Hare is a completely received image, and the front is worked like crazy. I work with the painting gods. We drink together.’

This communication between the two sides of Nelson’s works makes them more than just painted surfaces–each piece becomes an entity in itself. Often, as through a geology of painting, the work accumulates successive strata throughout its creation, resulting in layered works, seemingly formed through an interplay between sedimentation and rushing rapids. This drawn-out process is contrasted with the almost instantaneous character of other pieces–a sudden splash of paint across an unprepared canvas–forming a body of work that, as a whole, is as lively as it is considered.

In a current context, Dona Nelson’s work stands out for its lack of pretension. Her paintings speak about Painting without being self-conscious. Guided by her own increasingly accurate instinct, she has continued to challenge herself throughout her long career, always willing to follow where the work takes her. In recent history, others have broken up, questioned, or violated the well-established surface of the canvas, but Nelson venturesfurther, as she creates an interdependence between its two sides, semiotically diluting the material in between.