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For over fifty years, Dona Nelson has made series of different kinds of paintings, distinguished by a variety of approaches to both image and material.Nelson was born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1947. She received a B.F.A. from Ohio State University (1968), and studied at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (1967). She is a Professor of Painting and Drawing at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, where she has worked since 1992. Her paintings are included in museum collections such as The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of New South Wales in Australia. Among other grants, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994 and in 2011, she received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
[…] Dona Nelson discussed her show, ReFiguring, One Painting at a Time (1977-2022), which ran until December 17 at Thomas Erben Gallery in Chelsea. The title refers in some ways to Nelson’s process and to the idea that abstraction eliminates the figure. ReFiguring speaks to the idea that there are figures in the paintings and that figures look at the painting. There is a sculptural element to Nelson’s paintings, which can be viewed on two sides. Nelson finds that by making one side, something happens on the other, obligating her as the artist to respond to that. To hear more about this, listen to the complete interview. […]