Martina Nehrling

Statement & Resume

Artist Statement:
When I paint I am sounding out elements of my everyday life and I am captivated by the richly textured cacophony of disparate events, information, things…  And so my work consists largely of compositions of accumulation.  These seem to me one of the most legitimate kinds of pictures to make in our cultural landscape of abundant consumer goods and the privilege/burden of access to information.  In this way my paintings are not about just anything, rather they are about everything; at once the beauty, the horror, the weight of daily life.
I often take notes with separate brushstrokes of color, creating an index that may operate as a celebration of daily life or rebellion against it.  I use simple brushstrokes to be direct, but color in order to engage and explore its imprecise language.  I revel in color’s complexity, noticing how the eye tracks patterns of value and intensity and can be interrupted by particular relationships or a shift in scale.  There is also a significant auditory aspect to my painting process as I listen to the developing rhythm in the work, seeking to create moments of concord and discord, enjoying syncopation and visual rhyming.  Comprised of multi-colored paint marks grouped in vertical bands or layered in horizontal stacks, I often create patterns akin to lists, sentences, or phrases in my paintings; while, in other pieces I investigate how these marks might be attenuated, pulled and poured, condensing into suspended tangles where the chatter hovers on the edge of chaos.  At times I empty the composition of its accumulation and introduce air quite literally with imagery of the ever-changing constants of sky and clouds, creating the illusion of pictorial depth to contrast with a surface of ordered and disordered brushstrokes pursuing the ebb and flow of calm and panic, of chaos and hope.