Dona Nelson

Dona Nelson is an American painter renowned for her immersive, gestural, primarily abstract works that challenge traditional concepts of painting and viewership through the use of unconventional materials, processes, and formats.

Biography of Dona Nelson

Dona Nelson was born in 1947 in Grand Island, Nebraska, and went on to study at Ohio State University. She moved to New York City in 1967 to participate in the Whitney Independent Study Program and received her BFA from Ohio State University in 1968.

By 1971, she had been featured in notable exhibitions such as "Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists," curated by Lucy Lippard at the Aldrich Museum. In 1974, the Whitney Museum included her in the "Continuing Abstraction in American Art" exhibition. Her first solo show took place at the Rosa Esman Gallery on 57th Street in 1975.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Nelson showcased her work at museums, universities, and galleries such as Hamilton and Michael Klein in New York. In 1996, she relocated to Philadelphia to continue her teaching role at the Tyler School of Art.

She has also received numerous grants and awards, including the Anonymous Was A Woman Grant in 2015, the Artist Legacy Foundation Award in 2013, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award in 2011, and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1994.

Currently, the artist resides in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, and is a professor of painting and drawing at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University.

Dona Nelson's Art Style

Dona Nelson is primarily known for her fluid, abstract work that confronts the traditions of Abstract Expressionism and builds on Joan Miró's anti-paintings. She employs diverse methods such as pouring, staining, splattering, and stitching on unprimed canvas, using a variety of paints and nontraditional materials to create unexpected surfaces, textures, reliefs, and patterns. Nelson regards herself as a process artist, emphasizing chance, improvisation, and touch in her work.

Her adventurous approach to process has been noted by critics, who liken her willingness to take risks to that of Sigmar Polke. Nelson's exhibitions often appear as compendiums of modern and contemporary painting thought, reflecting her refusal to adhere to an easily identifiable style. This anarchic approach allows her to flirt with the painting's destruction, rejecting the conventionally ingratiating in favor of more challenging artistic expressions.