Artist's Statement

If you have ever spoken to me for more than an hour, you have probably heard me speak about: 1) Joseph Beuys’ How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare 2) my favorite country, Bhutan 3) personal thoughts concerning grief. With an initial loss comes countless unforeseen changes in one’s life like ripples, known as secondary losses. These include such things as loss of self: the part of the self that was given to the loved one and that with death, seems wrenched from one’s identity; loss of self-confidence: failure to recognize one’s own personal wholeness without the bereaved; loss of security: the recognition of human fragility and the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next; loss of the future, loss of the past, loss of known family structure, loss of direction, the list goes on.

I am constantly writing letters in my head to the people and things that have become lost to me. I am searching in books and songs and images for the words that will make things make sense, but sometimes I have to create my own sense. Books provide a natural narrative structure that allows me to compartmentalize, organize, and recontextualize my thoughts into themes: family or memories or fears or some combination of all of the above. Books function as both 2D and 3D art objects: they can be sculptural and inventive in their binding, but contain pages that function as unique views contributing to a greater, unified whole. Pages allow for any manifestation of 2D media: painting, drawing, text, printing, collage, image transfer—and really, who says you can’t incorporate 3D media into a book. I bind books by hand using a variety of methods, but I also alter existing books and rebind damaged books.

In my paintings, I use exaggerated color regardless of the subject matter: portraits, landscapes, abstract works. Abstraction allows some relief and mystery, but hardly anything I do is truly abstract: a color field canvas is actually a photographic sample of the sky; a nebula-like explosion is actually a bruise.

With my art, I am trying to tell you what is happening to me and what has happened, but more importantly, I am trying to tell these things to myself. 

Bio

Hadley Nelson is from Seattle, Washington. She holds a B.A. in Art Practice from Stanford University. At Stanford, she explored a variety of art forms including oil painting, ceramics, photography, book arts and printmaking.

Contact

hadleybnelson@gmail.com

Art photo credits to Michael Longoria