#4: 12/20/2020

Finding Our Way Through the Landscapes of Joan Nelson
by Benjamin Terrell

Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2019-20, spray enamel, acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in
Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman.

All eyes on Portland protests has turned the city into an art gallery of commentary, and if the blocks and blocks of boarded windows are her newest creation, the city is a particularly prolific artist.  Adams and Ollman gallery fear not, the serene smolder of the imaginary landscapes of Joan Nelson (on display there until Dec. 19) has become the city's sacred stained glass. Never has something so harmonious and holy begged to be plugged in like Nelson's electric plexiglass paintings. Having previously painted on wood, it's as if the artist shed surface for shimmer, perhaps next seen on foil as maps and manuscripts to faraway lands. Who among the locked-down and housebound hasn't evolved into an escapist or a would-be sailor of anywhere but home?

Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel, acrylic ink, marker and burnt sugar on acrylic sheet 20h x 20w in
Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman.

Our current digital home life is a life without landscape and is therefore a life without a place for our authentic selves to roam. In traditional landscape painting, self (most always male) is often at center. Joan Nelson's work is intriguing and opposite - she paints landscapes taking place before and after "us" and uses reverence to restore agency to her subjects. In doing so, the artist puts the "m" back into what IMAX reduced  to "-other earth." If her work is feminist, it is because she sets landscape free from ownership and paints past a masculine need to conquer. Picture Casper David Friedrich forgetting figure or cross, only to focus solely on the steam off a rock formation or how an unanticipated pink light from an unnamable source suspends the urge to capture in exchange for jaw dropping awe.

"...an unanticipated pink light from an unnamable source suspends the urge to capture in exchange for jaw dropping awe."
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Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2018, spray enamel and acrylic ink on acrylic sheet 12h x 12w in
Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman.

Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2019-20, spray enamel and acrylic ink on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in
Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman.

Sometimes a work by Nelson borrows directly from art history, including details from famous paintings excluded from their original context. The artist even reuses her own imagery.  The mystery is how she sews important and incidental parts into a seamless whole so well, like a poem or an ode made from only one word. In her work, volcanoes foam and glow, meteors swish and swoon, rainbows aren't reluctant and pure awareness lights up the resplendent unknown. For her show, the plexiglass paintings are placed on ledges, and if you are lucky enough to get to see their opulent other side, then there are further codes to be cracked. Painted, scraped, and drawn in with unusual materials like glitter, wax and sealant, expressive colors and shapes reveal a backside becoming a switchboard to the divine. 

"In her work, volcanoes foam and glow, meteors swish and swoon, rainbows aren't reluctant and pure awareness lights up the resplendent unknown."
​
Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel, acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in
Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman.

What I admire most about Nelson's work is the same thing that I find intriguing about classical Indian satellite radio. Rapturous meditations intimately heard from afar remain nameless (by language barrier over the airwaves) and therefore, ask for all your attention, like a divine secret spoken only once. Also, like radio sounds from a distant continent, details and passages emerge like finding a feather but not the bird. What is known and not known is made more mysterious and resplendent by the detail. Both audio and the artist's visual are symphonic palaces of the in-between. Both are the "thin places" of creativity, where the curtain that conceals us from everything eternal is at its most transparent.  

Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel and acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 20h x 20w in
Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman.

We are nostalgic for what cannot be named or can never be known, and for Nelson that quest is center stage. Her artistic visions are like biblical prequels or like discovering the planet's Lonely Planet guide or, imagine if you can, a Jules Verne book as a coy pond. To reimagine a landscape without us is to look away from what we think is the real world. To make great art from that expression is to gaze higher, discard everything not needed in prayer, empty ourselves out and find patterns in our transformation. If we choose to look at the world through Nelson's creative spiritual lens, past training and limitations, a coherent world is restored in which nature remains an ally and mystery is always greater than knowledge.

Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel and acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in
Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman.

New Works: Joan Nelson was on display at Adams and Ollman (December, 2020).

Coda:
Nelson told me about a trip she took from New York to Oregon to visit her parents on the coast. After flying into Portland, she began driving in the opposite direction of her destination because the GPS of the car had dropped and reset. It wasn't until reaching the gorge that separates Washington and Oregon that she realized the error and rerouted.  But by then, Nelson explained, the mistake had led to discoveries of magnificent and unexpected new landscapes. Embracing the misstep and continuing on an unknown path, the artist was lead on a different journey around the state, that was both "perfect and beautiful." The road trip story is also a perfect analogy for how the artist approaches a new painting. 

The Columbia River Gorge that divides Oregon and Washington.
Photos by David Schell