ART REVIEW
Nelander bold with color and texture
By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic
Arthur Nelander likes to tell stories. They might be cryptic and condensed, but they are colorful nonetheless. In his new "Rag Bare Series," he shares 26 abstract acrylic painted "stories" of the important women in his life — mentors, family, friends and lovers. Each woman inspired an icon for this series, a distillation of his memory and experiences. The titles of each piece are the names of these women.
Arthur Nelander
Nelander is not afraid of color. Active involvement in the art profession for 35 years has taught him to be courageous. And this series is just that: bold, intense, textured and in your face. His deliberate use of fields of complementary colors, repetitive shapes and juxtapositions of matt and shiny colors in different viscosities is loud. He uses impasto (paint applied in heavy layers) on 450-pound, hand-made rag paper, working the surface back and forth between aggravated and thin, translucent areas as if he were icing a cake.
'Rag Bare Series: Personal Icons'
In "Kathleen," a field of yellow becomes electric, poking out from under a surface of green sprinkled with mica. The gestural strokes of peach, rust and yellow in "Constance" are painted on top of a piece of screen which pixilates the colors.
Shapes repeat in many of the paintings evocative of shapes of carved ancient yoni (in Shaktis, the external female organs), lingam (in Hinduism, a phallus) and breasts.
"There is an honesty to this series," says Nelander. "I didn't hold back my palette. The marks are made during the process, not after the fact, and I allowed more of the substructure to remain evident."
