JAN NELSON
Jan Nelson creates her hyper-real paintings by first photographing and then painting her young subjects using a bright, intense palette. Each subject is named, and each appears according to his or her wishes. Despite their distinctive appearance, her adolescent subjects nevertheless wear recognisably popular clothes and accessories — accoutrements of ‘fitting in’ and belonging.
Nelson’s art focuses on the moments, gaps and pauses that punctuate our experience of time and passing events. As the artist has noted, this series is constructed around the notion of the ‘space between’ the actual world we exist in and the one we desire.
Speaking of the desire to transcend the everyday, she cites the private world of emotion and imagination as spaces of refuge and possible liberation. The years between childhood and adulthood are marked by great transitions. Nelson portrays these adolescents during moments of reflection, when they are truly themselves and not the sum of their outward clothes and accessories.
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