Spring Fever

Martina Nehrling
Spring Fever

Painting
Year: 2023
Edition: Unique
Technique: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 137.2 x 121.9x 0.1cm
Framed: No
£6,550

About this Artwork
Martina Nehrling is an American abstract artist whose dynamic and richly textured paintings evoke kaleidoscopic worlds of pattern, color, shadow and form.

Nehrling employs a highly developed, idiosyncratic painting method that involves methodical accumulations of abrupt, impasto brush marks.

Using pure, opaque colours, she projects a bold and vivid energy from her compositions. Each carefully placed mark grips on to its neighbour, forming hypnotic shapes and forms that seem to vibrate.

The hard edges and geometric shapes make the work feel structured and architectonic, while sumptuously oozing trails of paint drip freely, betraying an embrace of the accident, and a respect for the human hand.


About the Artist
Martina Nehrling is an American abstract artist whose dynamic and richly textured paintings evoke kaleidoscopic worlds of pattern, color, shadow and form.
She lives and works in Chicago, IL, USA.


Education
Nehrling earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 1993, and her Master of Fine Arts from The University of Chicago in 2001. She has been a Visiting Artist at Bradley University, Peoria, IL; University of Chicago; and Columbia College, Chicago, as well as an Instructor at SAIC and a Lecturer at Lake Forest College.


Technique
Nehrling employs a highly developed, idiosyncratic painting method that involves methodical accumulations of abrupt, impasto brush marks.
Using pure, opaque colours, she projects a bold and vivid energy from her compositions. Each carefully placed mark grips on to its neighbour, forming hypnotic shapes and forms that seem to vibrate.
The hard edges and geometric shapes make the work feel structured and architectonic, while sumptuously oozing trails of paint drip freely, betraying an embrace of the accident, and a respect for the human hand.


Inspiration
Nehrling is drawn to discordant forces, such as push versus pull; planning vs randomness; and plastic formalism versus sumptuous feeling. Despite the constructed sense of austerity she imbues into her paintings, Nehrling is constantly drawn to experimentation and the allure of the unknown. She lists amongst her inspirations contemporaries such as Shinique Smith and Julie Mehretu—two artists also interested in the visual and psychological effects of accumulation and chaos. Yet, Nehrling also cites Minimalist artist Ellsworth Kelly as an influence, as well as “the emotive materiality” of installation artist Jim Hodges. What all of these elements have in common is a restless interplay between dichotomous forces. Out of apparently paradoxical discord, her paintings build and build until a tone of anxious, tentative harmony is achieved.


Artist Statement
“Seduced by the formal complexity of color, I revel in its emotive slipperiness and enjoy mining its controversial decorativeness. I weave visual rhythms—resonant, discordant, muscular, mellifluous—in patterns akin to currents and eddies, note taking, list making, pixilation and mapping. I use multiple distinct brushstrokes for their staccato quality and graphic directness, and employ highly saturated chroma for its insistence, its unapologetic hysteria, its mirth and its madness. With this tensile language I explore what it means to be here, musing meditatively or ranting in lush celebration, high-pitched lament, or raucous rebellion.”


Collections
Her works are in numerous public and institutional collections, including those of the Federal Reserve Bank, Chicago, IL; the Imagery Estate of the Benziger Winery Family, Glen Ellen, CA; BMO Harris Bank, Chicago, IL; PNC Bank, Chicago, IL; and New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, among many others.