Brought up to our attention by an exhibition in a SoHo gallery two years ago, in the little time remaining between the end of a congress and a plane departing to Paris, Lori Nelson was still an unknown person to us. On a sunny saturday following the AMCF 2006 meeting she welcomed us in her Brooklyn studio, for too short a moment ...

Lori, thank you to welcome us in your new studio located in Dumbo (Down under Mahattan Brooklyn Overpass). You recently moved from Utah to this fashionable Brooklyn area. How does this change your life?

Lori Nelson : Living in New York City, especially Brooklyn, is a visual buffet for me.  The architecture is brave and forceful.  Structures are often built here to defy rules and can visually make little sense as they seem to be in the act of slipping and tumbling into each other even as they stand still.  Walking under the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge is an experience I give thanks for every single day.  New York architecture is crazy in a way that Utah (and most) architecture is not and that fact is enough for me to feel like I could never leave.  If I left, I don’t know if I could be happy not being surprised by the buildings I see everyday when I walk outside.


We imagine the New York surrounding to be quite stressfull.  You certainly are more used to mountain landscapes. New York is also known to be a generator of loneliness and selfishness. I observed when coming here with a cab that the cab driver didnot even got an answer from a pizza man he asked for Main Street … So how this big city life impact the way you do your painting?

Lori Nelson : I feel like the embrace of the mountains that I experienced in Utah is a lot like what I feel in NYC.  Like those big western mountains in Utah, the buildings here silently watch over their people.  New Yorkers often talk about feeling scared in big open spaces without people all around, feeling vulnerable.  We feel each other very much here in NYC, more so than in other places.  People are part of the urban landscape.  This fact dictates that to maintain a little private space, people have to put on a public appearance of being aloof or distant.  We don’t each have our own car-bubble to sit in while moving through the world here and so we must create our own bubble.  This may sometimes be mistaken for loneliness or isolation, but it is really about privacy.  I have found that when called upon, New Yorkers love to help people.  You just have to break through their bubble momentarily.  As for the pizza guy, I would bet a bunch of Euros that he just didn’t understand English.  For the most part, New Yorkers are very happy to give directions.




Among your recent paintings, you showed me a man carrying a device, looking like a scientist in an old lab, and also a woman working in a call center watching a tiny screen… All characters seeming to escape from a book written by Aldous Huxley (Brave New World you told me).  Is this choice of characters new and related to your living in New York?

Lori Nelson : The people in my paintings are more global than specific to NYC.  They seem to be with one foot in the old world before everybody needed devices and another foot in this new world where we must never leave home without several devices.  This special time talks about my generation, a generation of transition.  The people in my paintings don’t really seem to have a perfect understanding of what their devices mean or how they work.  This talks about my generation too.


Also you showed me this painting with a person carrying a mobile. Has technology definitly entered your artistic world?

Lori Nelson : Technology thrills me, mystifies me, and overwhelms me all at the same time.  In so little time, it has insinuated itself into all aspects of our lives. 




About the time. Most of your characters seem fairly young but surrounded by landscapes or settings that are painted with old tones, blue, green, amber, your prefered color it seems… Does it mean that you propose scenes of the past, I mean that the time is always set in the past. Is that really yours?

Lori Nelson : My style does tend to have roots in the past.  Right now I am interested in old primers and illustrations from old storybooks.  The colors from those old books are sweet while much of my subject matter can seem a bit sinister.  I like the juxtaposition.


About the technics now. You are painting on sqares of thick wood. Does it mean that you try to make your paintings look like old wooden toys ? May we know more on the technics itself and the purpose?

Lori Nelson : Well, I started painting on wood when my young daughter accidentally punctured a canvas I had just completed.  The painting was already sold and leaning against a wall.  My little girl was hiding behind it and pushed it over on top of a tripod.  The tripod pierced the subjects face which was fitting because the painting, Homemaking, is about a mother trying to complete work while her kids hinder her.  After this, I started using wood.  I discovered I actually prefer the smooth surface of wood over the “thirsty” surface of canvas as I use a series of oil glazes in my work.




Let's get back to the time… you devised dipychs, triptychs and I would say  a recent "Polyptychs" for which it is possible to see a story unrolling from one part to the other, with the possibility of reversing the time when exchanging two pieces… What does it mean? Is time and nostalgia the real drive behind your paintings?

Lori Nelson : My work isn’t really so nostalgic but rather I utilize the past ironically, juxtaposing contemporary situations with old and unlikely settings. I do like to mess with time the best I can by altering conclusions in my narratives.  I’m doing my best to implement Quantum Physics in my work and to experience different realities within certain pieces by switching interchangeable panels around, creating different outcomes. 


Same question for your "Brave New World" characters. They seem to escape from a future located in the past… A past future. Am I right?

Lori Nelson : My characters are somewhat neutral.  If they look traditional or “from the past” I make a point lately of giving them something like a tattoo based on Brooklyn Graffiti or a cellular phone or an iPod.  Again, I like the juxtaposition of Now and Then.  I like to mix it all up.  Post-postmodern.  Or is that Post-post-postmodern?  Past-future is good.



 
When I discovered your paintings at Coda Gallery in SoHo two years ago I selected a diptych for my report onto which there was a womman by her window looking to a man in the opposite building. The two characters were separated in the design as well as in the reality by the two splitted wooden parts… unable to reach each other. Is this linked to the idea of "evry body has a broken heart" you suggested to me when showing your recent paintings ?  What is that "heart broken syndrom". What does it mean to you?

Lori Nelson : I think that in the same way that everybody has a novel in them, everybody also contains various degrees of heartbreak. A person’s private heartbreak is so special it rarely sees the light of day but instead is usually tucked away very nicely.  We couldn’t really advance our lives otherwise, could we.  I like to paint people who expose their heartbreak because it is so rare for people to drag their heart outside.  When I see people with their heartbreak on the outside, I remember that they and I are made of essentially the same material and I feel their/my heartbreak a little.  I remember our shared humanity.

On Consultingnewsline the art section is named Art Break (nothing related to Tom Petty). What is your opinion about that coincidence? Is there any with your idea of the broken heart?

Lori Nelson : I think that there is no coincidence that Consulting News Online has a section called “Art Break” and you will hear from my attorney soon...




Broken hearts and sorrow can be linked sometimes with childhood. Childrens appear on some of your paintings - Kids and young people I should say, because I have not seen any elderly people yet.  Any link between kids and broken hearts?

Lori Nelson : Children are witnesses in my world.  They gather information, much of it too mature for them, and digest it, making themselves into adults.  Any parent will tell you that they are surprised by how much their young child understands about heartbreaking or scary or “adult” conversations.  Wise children (like my daughter) are quiet and absorb way too much information while adults forget ²hat she is there, silent and wide-eyed in the corner.  I think she  is learning from us how to confront the world.

On one of those paintings we selected two years ago for our report,  there was a young girl, black haired,  pale faced with thin eybrows. She seemed to be lost in an hostile forest. The main colors were blue - green, the colours you are wearing today.  Was this a self portrait? Does the "nostalgia principle" applying?

Lori Nelson : Many of these paintings look a little like me.  They are not exactly always myself, but rather somebody, anybody, experiencing humanity.  So they are myself, but not only myself.  I choose my features often because I know them best.  Many of the men, by the way, resemble my husband, a fact that he laments from time to time.  I think a lot of people come away from my shows feeling sorry for my husband.



Finaly I remember me reporting you saying that "you liked your paintings, mostly autobiographical, to be free of your own interpretation of the facts and once created to exist independently of you  "…  Like kids we may say. Might that be your ultimate thought about your own work?

Lori Nelson : Yes, I do want my paintings to stand up and walk independently of me.  However, I do hope that the same little piece of humanity that inspired me to create a painting will reach the viewer in some sort of heartbreak-communion.  Hopefully the viewer will realize they are not alone in this world and that some artist in Brooklyn sometimes feels just the way they do.



Words collected by Bertrand Villeret
Editor in Chief, ConsultingNewsLine


To know more :

Lori Nelson's WebSite :


Call center (Lori Nelson 2005)


ConsultingNewsLine 2005
Report :


(Lori Nelson circa 2004)