When we were fearless
Painting
Year: 2014
Edition: Unique
Technique: Acrylic on canvas
Framed: No
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AUTHENTICITY
All artworks on IdeelArt are original, signed, delivered directly from the artist's studio, and come with a certificate of authenticity.Martina Nehrling is an American abstract artist whose dynamic and richly textured paintings evoke kaleidoscopic worlds of pattern, color, shadow and form.
In this painting, Nehrling explores youthful disregard for danger, recalling a season when with friends she would leap across a light well from a third storey window to the rooftop of the neighboring building.
The streetlight flickered up through trees in sync with a lake-scented breeze, and the contour of downtown Chicago was a crystalline mirage in the dusk. Though she shudders with gratitude, she remembers feeling part of the sky and all its colors.
Martina Nehrling is an American abstract artist whose dynamic and richly textured paintings evoke kaleidoscopic worlds of pattern, color, shadow and form. She lives and works in Chicago, IL, USA.
Education
Nehrling earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 1993, and her Master of Fine Arts from The University of Chicago in 2001. She has been a Visiting Artist at Bradley University, Peoria, IL; University of Chicago; and Columbia College, Chicago, as well as an Instructor at SAIC and a Lecturer at Lake Forest College.
Technique
Nehrling employs a highly developed, idiosyncratic painting method that involves methodical accumulations of abrupt, impasto brush marks. Using pure, opaque colors, she projects a bold and vivid energy from her compositions. Each carefully placed mark grips onto its neighbor, forming hypnotic shapes and forms that seem to vibrate. The hard edges and geometric shapes make the work feel structured and architectonic, while sumptuously oozing trails of paint drip freely, betraying an embrace of the accident and a respect for the human hand.
Inspiration
Nehrling is drawn to discordant forces, such as push versus pull; planning vs randomness; and plastic formalism versus sumptuous feeling. Despite the constructed sense of austerity she imbues into her paintings, Nehrling is constantly drawn to experimentation and the allure of the unknown. She lists amongst her inspirations contemporaries such as Shinique Smith and Julie Mehretu—two artists also interested in the visual and psychological effects of accumulation and chaos. Yet, Nehrling also cites Minimalist artist Ellsworth Kelly as an influence, as well as “the emotive materiality” of installation artist Jim Hodges. What all of these elements have in common is a restless interplay between dichotomous forces. Out of apparently paradoxical discord, her paintings build and build until a tone of anxious, tentative harmony is achieved.
Artist Statement
“Seduced by the formal complexity of color, I revel in its emotive slipperiness and enjoy mining its controversial decorativeness. I weave visual rhythms—resonant, discordant, muscular, mellifluous—in patterns akin to currents and eddies, note taking, list making, pixilation and mapping. I use multiple distinct brushstrokes for their staccato quality and graphic directness, and employ highly saturated chroma for its insistence, its unapologetic hysteria, its mirth and its madness. With this tensile language I explore what it means to be here, musing meditatively or ranting in lush celebration, high-pitched lament, or raucous rebellion.”
Collections
Her works are in numerous public and institutional collections, including those of the Federal Reserve Bank, Chicago, IL; the Imagery Estate of the Benziger Winery Family, Glen Ellen, CA; BMO Harris Bank, Chicago, IL; PNC Bank, Chicago, IL; and New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, among many others.
Exhibitions
Nehrling has been featured twice in New American Paintings: 2011, Midwest, Issue #95, and 2002, Midwest, Issue #41. Her work has been exhibited extensively in museums and galleries across the United States and in Europe, including at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York; Krasl Art Center, St. Joseph, Michigan; South Bend Regional Art Museum, South Bend, IN; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL; Thessaloniki Contemporary Art Center, Thessaloniki, Greece; Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, Austria; and Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy
Galleries
Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York City
Zinc Contemporary, Seattle
Artworks from this Artist
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