The Quintessent Decade
Lynn Nesseth
January 29th - March 12, 2021
Artist Statement:
All this time I’ve been letting the paintings tell me. A ten year long enchantment - probably some early spell cast from romanticizing hermetic masters- enveloped my life. For an entire decade I’ve been pushing around oil pastels on the same ply-wood boards until my fingertips are raw and sore. And an unexpected thing happened from pouring so much time over these paintings: I finally experienced painting. The paintings themselves transformed into time capsules, decanting the fourth dimension and containing one quarter of my life.
Time’s quintessential to my relationship with these paintings, dealing with decisions I’ve made in marks, gestures, colors - years before - sometimes wiping out fixed elements of over five years standing. I quit glitter, started taking greater risks with my mark making, and then the entire palette got really dark. One year the paintings were never touched at all. Over the years the paintings' emergence has reflected my own and through time’s passage my devotion to both bodies has grown exponentially.
As I abandoned all rules and listened I kept being returned to the wood. I reintroduced more nearly identical wood and flesh tones into my palette and removed more and more of the oil pastel, re-exposing the bare wood grain beneath and accentuating the material object of the painting. Somewhat analogous to draping the figure I contoured the painting’s bright and nearly immaterial garments - cut from what material fills the space of ten years’ time - into their nude frames.
Another subconscious emergence was my aesthetic relationship with the Futurists, keeping rhythm with the Synchromists. Influenced by Manet to Duchamp I’m relating the surfaces of imaginal elemental compounds back to the surface of the painting. The subject of particulate matter, presolar grains, is repeated materially through my use of glitter. At night the glitter works by adding other dimensions; and a spotlight offers yet another aspect to the works’ aesthetic.
Through some measure of stardust - its cadence of matrices lilting across an unfolding fifth dimension - the paintings dreamed themselves into being. Out of a nebulous ground forms eventually emerged. Subconsciousness came spilling out encoded in crystals. Intuitive material surfaced and refracted into facets. And the second dimension gave birth to the third. The physical paintings became themselves; and I, a painter.
All this time I’ve been letting the paintings tell me. A ten year long enchantment - probably some early spell cast from romanticizing hermetic masters- enveloped my life. For an entire decade I’ve been pushing around oil pastels on the same ply-wood boards until my fingertips are raw and sore. And an unexpected thing happened from pouring so much time over these paintings: I finally experienced painting. The paintings themselves transformed into time capsules, decanting the fourth dimension and containing one quarter of my life.
Time’s quintessential to my relationship with these paintings, dealing with decisions I’ve made in marks, gestures, colors - years before - sometimes wiping out fixed elements of over five years standing. I quit glitter, started taking greater risks with my mark making, and then the entire palette got really dark. One year the paintings were never touched at all. Over the years the paintings' emergence has reflected my own and through time’s passage my devotion to both bodies has grown exponentially.
As I abandoned all rules and listened I kept being returned to the wood. I reintroduced more nearly identical wood and flesh tones into my palette and removed more and more of the oil pastel, re-exposing the bare wood grain beneath and accentuating the material object of the painting. Somewhat analogous to draping the figure I contoured the painting’s bright and nearly immaterial garments - cut from what material fills the space of ten years’ time - into their nude frames.
Another subconscious emergence was my aesthetic relationship with the Futurists, keeping rhythm with the Synchromists. Influenced by Manet to Duchamp I’m relating the surfaces of imaginal elemental compounds back to the surface of the painting. The subject of particulate matter, presolar grains, is repeated materially through my use of glitter. At night the glitter works by adding other dimensions; and a spotlight offers yet another aspect to the works’ aesthetic.
Through some measure of stardust - its cadence of matrices lilting across an unfolding fifth dimension - the paintings dreamed themselves into being. Out of a nebulous ground forms eventually emerged. Subconsciousness came spilling out encoded in crystals. Intuitive material surfaced and refracted into facets. And the second dimension gave birth to the third. The physical paintings became themselves; and I, a painter.
The artist would like to donate 5% of their sales to the Castlewood Community Center.
Artist Bio:
Lynn Nesseth was born in Cannon Falls, MN on October 12, 1978. Their work, mostly in social practice, falls into a subgenre they’ve coined the Aesthetic Occult. Liminal space, time, the subconscious and the esoteric are dominant themes. Lynn’s work borrows from all the 2D, 3D, and 4D genres though they identify primarily as a conceptual artist. This is their first solo exhibition in painting. They’ve participated in the Black Mountain College Museum's {RE}HAPPENING, the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival, and held residence at the Mission for Temporal Art (MTA). They hold a BFA in Painting/Drawing from California College of the Arts (2006) and certifications from the Chestnut School for Herbal Medicine and the Shanti Collective School of Energy Healing and Self Transformation in the green and white witchcrafts, respectively. Lynn has an ongoing obsession with cut glass prisms from which they’ve been creating a separate body of assemblages.
Lynn Nesseth was born in Cannon Falls, MN on October 12, 1978. Their work, mostly in social practice, falls into a subgenre they’ve coined the Aesthetic Occult. Liminal space, time, the subconscious and the esoteric are dominant themes. Lynn’s work borrows from all the 2D, 3D, and 4D genres though they identify primarily as a conceptual artist. This is their first solo exhibition in painting. They’ve participated in the Black Mountain College Museum's {RE}HAPPENING, the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival, and held residence at the Mission for Temporal Art (MTA). They hold a BFA in Painting/Drawing from California College of the Arts (2006) and certifications from the Chestnut School for Herbal Medicine and the Shanti Collective School of Energy Healing and Self Transformation in the green and white witchcrafts, respectively. Lynn has an ongoing obsession with cut glass prisms from which they’ve been creating a separate body of assemblages.
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Public Gallery Hours
Wednesday 12pm-5pm
Thursday 12pm-5pm Friday 12pm-5pm Saturday 12pm - 5pm Viewings also available by appointment |
The Loudoun House
209 Castlewood Dr. Lexington, Ky. 40505 Email: [email protected]
Phone 859-254-7024 |
All Lexington Art League programs are made possible through the generous support of LexArts.
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The Kentucky Arts Council, a state arts agency, provides operating support to the Lexington Art League with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support provided by Lexington Parks & Recreation.
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A yearly online giving challenge from the Bluegrass Community Foundation.
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