Nellie King Solomon
Born1971
San Francisco, California, US
NationalityAmerican
Education
MovementLight and Space | Finish Fetish | Color Field
Websitenelliekingsolomon.com

Nellie King Solomon (b. 1971) is an American contemporary painter best known for her large-scale abstract gestural paintings on Mylar. Her work explores ideas of space, environment, control, loss of control, materials, and movement.[1][2] It is said she makes "beautiful pictures of terrible things."[3]

Solomon paints her abstract works by sometimes pouring and often times pushing paint, inks, and other materials, sometimes toxic, such as asphalt and soda ash[4] over translucent Mylar using custom tools.[3]

Solomon's art practice straddles several different art movements while being wholly contemporary, including the Light and Space movement, Finish Fetish Movement, and Color field Painting.[5]

Early life and education

Nellie King Solomon was born in 1971 in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, California to two prominent San Francisco residents; architect Daniel Solomon and iconic artist and designer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon (Bobbie), creator of Supergraphics.[6] Her family has extensive roots in the California creative community. In an interview with The Project for Women, Solomon says "I come from a family of designers, authors, tv writers, hat makers, pianists and shrinks. In short, generations of Californian creative professionals who made their livings off their wits and taste."[7]

Although the child of notable individuals, her youth was full of challenging experiences.[8] Solomon struggled to keep up in French school later being diagnosed as dyslexic.[5] Also in her youth, Solomon spent years training in ballet, but struggled in her training when issues with her feet forced her to cease her practice.[5]

For high school, Solomon attended the Urban School in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.[3] While in school Solomon decided to follow in her father's footsteps and become involved with architecture, choosing to work on an architectural restoration project in Venice, Italy. Also during her high school years Solomon worked as an artist assistant to David Ireland.[5]

For undergraduate university studies, Solomon was accepted into the highly competitive Cooper Union’s School of Architecture in New York City. Following her departure from Cooper Union, Solomon took a gap year studying and travelling. She spent time studying and working in sustainable development and agriculture in Santa Cruz. She lived in New York, Paris, and Barcelona before ultimately deciding to return to California to study art.[5]

Upon her return to California, Solomon completed a BA in Art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received her Masters in Fine Art at the California College of the Arts alongside contemporary artist and classmate Alexandra Grant.[3] Solomon was a professor of art at Stanford University and California College of the Arts.[9]

Work and career

In 2001, then recently out of grad school, Solomon had her first solo show which garnered critical praise[3] even from the hard-to-please SF Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker. His glowing critique of her first show also laid down a challenge: "Her show is a powerful debut that will be hard for her to follow" said Baker. Solomon laughed at his challenge and decided to face it head on.[2]

Since her first solo exhibition, Solomon's work has continued to evolve to meet Baker's challenge. Her work is said to encompass both the micro and macro – sometimes in complete abstraction and at other times with narrative visuals incorporated into them.[1] In a review by David M. Roth, Roth says "it’s impossible to say whether you’re seeing a magnified view of a molecular reaction or a vision of the Earth's crust from outer space" and in that sense sees her work as closely related to the photographs of Edward Burtynsky and David Maisel.[1]

In either case, critics have placed Solomon's work firmly in the art canon of abstract painting. Roth provides further context by indicating her work has elements of "the free-form splatter of Jackson Pollock, the staining of Helen Frankenthaler, the gravity-based dripping of Pat Steir, the hybrid smearing techniques invented by Ed Moses and the gritty surfaces of early Sam Francis."[1]

Separately, art critic Kenneth Baker agrees and places her work firmly among the paintings of Sam Francis, Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler and further believes that Solomon's narrow strip series, "recall the marks left by melting ice in Andy Goldsworthy's icicle drawings."[10]

Although Solomon's work shares elements with modernist abstract painters, she is also actively rebelling against them. In a published catalog for an exhibition with Ochi Projects, her work is described as "engaging with the history of painting in a challenging and combative style."[11] Solomon provides further context for her work stating "because I grew up in architecture ...that sort of high modernism [is something] I both play off of and rebel against."[12] Further insight into her work is illustrated in an interview with The Project for Women, Solomon says "My work is like reaching into a dark velvet bag and pulling out everything you’re not suppose to talk about."[7]

Solomon's work has been featured in the Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Hyperallergic , Wallpaper, Harvard Review, Zyzzyva, Art in America, San Francisco Examiner, Art Practical, ArtBlitzLA, NYTheatre, and Architectural Digest, among other publications.[5]

In 2019, Solomon made the major decision to move her art practice from San Francisco to Los Angeles.[13]

Art Process

Solomon often uses her past training to inform her art process. Solomon makes her paintings on a substrate of Mylar which is heavily used in architectural drawing[14] and comes directly out of her training as an architect.[12][15]

As a self confessed surfer, Solomon credits the incredible physical process of painting large scale works with her surfing practice and prior training in ballet. "My growing up as a ballet dancer very much affects the way I hop around spaces and crawl over my table and push and pull the paint. I’m very physical with it,"[3]

Her paintings often incorporate bold colors which art critic Kenneth Baker believes "yield[s] something that eludes most painters working in this vein: the sense of color displaying itself."[16]

Affiliated art movements and styles

Although straddling several movements including Light and Space movement, Finish Fetish Movement, and Color field Painting, her work does not fit comfortably into any single movement.

Her work is often shown in equal conversation alongside: Sam Francis, Ed Moses, Louise Nelson, Chihuly, Jim Dine,, Anthony James, Peter Alexander, Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Carl Benjamin, Wally Hedrick, Tony Berlant, Andy Moses, Chuck Arnoldi, Deborah Oropallo, and Jimi Gleason.[5]

Works in conversation with Barbara Stauffacher Solomon

Nellie King Solomon is an essential collaborator for her iconic nonagenarian mother Barbara Stauffacher Solomon (Bobbie), often acting as both installation facilitator, creator and career manager. The two have had numerous exhibitions together, maintain similar influences, but remain distinct in their approaches to art making.[17]

Their similarities include both being trained in architecture, although neither were ever licensed. They both create rules and grids and then challenge them.[18] They both rely on Cartesian coordinates, but with very different purposes.[1]

Although both artists share similar influences, Nellie King Solomon, often rebels from the hard-edged[1] Swiss graphic design and modernist work of her mother.[5]

In a review by Pacific Sun Newspaper for their show SUPER-SILLY-US, writer Owen explains "Solomon’s work is abstract and irreverent, and has a kind of relationship to movement and the body. Bobbie’s work is really informed by her meticulous training in Swiss graphic design with set rules behind it. That said, they were both trained as architects, and it’s interesting to see how each of them has taken that interest and translated it in very different ways through visual art."[6]

Notable two-person museum exhibitions with King Solomon and Stauffacher Solomon

  • In 2019–2020 their first two-person museum exhibition was held at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona (SMOCA).[13] For the first time, the work of mother and daughter artists was shown in proximity. While both artists explored the physicality of the space, they also showed interest in the potential of performance in constructing art.[18]
  • In March 2023, Solomon and Solomon had a second two person exhibition held at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art titled 'SUPER-SILLY-US' as part of Marin MOCA's annual Bay Area Legends exhibition series. During the exhibition Solomon referenced her mother's Supergraphics by designing her own version of Supergraphics for a 1969 Ford Econoline used as part installation part bar for the exhibition.[1][6]

Exhibitions

Among others, Solomon has had two person and solo exhibitions[5] at

Group exhibitions have featured her work at

Collections

Among public and private collections[5] holding work by Solomon are

Awards

Solomon has been nominated for the SECA award multiple times.[2] The SECA Art Award distinguishes Bay Area artists whose work, at the time of nomination, has not received substantial recognition from a major institution.[19]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Roth, David M. (2010-10-07). "Nellie King Solomon @ Brian Gross". Squarecylinder.com – Art Reviews | Art Museums | Art Gallery Listings Northern California. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  2. 1 2 3 "ARTIST PROFILE: Nellie King Solomon". HuffPost. 2010-09-01. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Journal, Vicki Larson | Marin Independent (2019-08-07). "Artist Nellie King Solomon creates 'beautiful pictures of terrible things'". Marin Independent Journal. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  4. ↑ Solomon, Nellie King. "About NKS". Nellie King Solomon. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Anderson, Calder (2022-06-03). "ZIG ZAG | Nellie King Solomon". WITHITGIRL. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  6. 1 2 3 "Not Supercilious: 'SUPER-SILLY-US' MarinMOCA | Pacific Sun". Pacific Sun | Marin County, California. 2023-02-14. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  7. 1 2 "Nellie King Solomon – The Project For Women". 2014-04-17. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  8. ↑ Solnit, Rebecca (2018-11-06). Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-78873-135-5.
  9. ↑ "Back Matter". Harvard Review (37). 2009. ISSN 1077-2901. JSTOR 25703318.
  10. ↑ Baker, Kenneth (2001-07-28). "Pleasures in rich pools of color / A powerful debut at..." SFGATE. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  11. ↑ Solomon, Nellie King. "CARLA – Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles". Nellie King Solomon. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  12. 1 2 Baker, Kenneth (2002-10-01). "Splitting perceptions of Ellsworth Kelly". SFGATE. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  13. 1 2 Stories, Local (2023-05-22). "Check Out Nellie King Solomon's Story – Voyage LA Magazine | LA City Guide". voyagela.com. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  14. ↑ Yee, Rendow (2007-07-20). Architectural Drawing: A Visual Compendium of Types and Methods. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-79366-3.
  15. ↑ Gussow, Sue Ferguson (2013-07-02). Architects Draw: Freehand Fundamentals. Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 978-1-61689-181-7.
  16. ↑ Baker, Kenneth (2010-09-25). "Nellie King Solomon at Brian Gross gallery". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  17. ↑ "Local Event: SUPER-SILLY-US: Barbara Stauffacher Solomon with Nellie King Solomon". Novato, CA Patch. 2023-01-20. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  18. 1 2 "BEYOND: Works by Nellie King Solomon and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon". SMoCA. 2020-05-05. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  19. ↑ "About the SECA Art Award". SFMOMA. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
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