NELLIE KING SOLOMON : CORESTRENGTH
Solomon is an abstract artist who makes paintings that interrogate painting. She is a painter always breaking with the conventions of painting. Solomon chooses substrate as a set of questions and opportunities. Solomon has been called “the alchemist”. She experiments with materials to see what they say about painting. Solomon use toxic chemical colors, corrosion, glitz, and grit in a refined field of emptiness, with no recourse, to paint about the stuff of our guts. Paintings are about conversation and their omissions, about driving and talking.
“I make ZenPop paintings In Pursuit of the Blob”. Solomon’s abstract art is both about the act of painting and her experience of great western landscapes, interior and exterior terrains, and the shock of unabsorbed events. She works reductively to communicate the power of an experience, rather than narrate it. Solomon’s legacy with architecture and Supergraphics laid a foundation for her work.
Solomon studied architecture at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. She holds a BA in Art from University of California Santa Cruz, and an MFA from California College of the Arts. Solomon was a professor of Art at Stanford University and California College of the Arts. She worked as an artist assistant to David Ireland, and an architectural restorator on the Palazzo St Polo in Venice. She lived in Paris, Venice, Barcelona, and New York City before returning to California.
Solomon’s work has received extensive critical acclaim; featured in Art in America, Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Art Practical, Hyperallergic, Wallpaper, Harvard Review, ArtBlitzLA, Zyzzyva, NYTheatre, and Architectural Digest, among other publications.
She exhibited at The Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive, Crocker Art Museum, Bolinas Museum, Brian Gross Fine Art, Braunstein/Quay, The Battery SF, Ochi Projects LA, Ochi Gallery Sun Valley, Melissa Morgan Fine Arts Palm Desert, N’Namdi Contemporary in Chicago, Detroit, and Miami. She is collected by Steve Wynn, Blue Shield, Visa, Yves Béhar, Sabrina Buell, and The Berkeley Art Museum BAMPFA.