Painting
Colour, light and luminosity have been strong preoccupations.
More recently, her experiences in the bush have led to an interest in abstraction, organic pattern and expressive mark making.
Dan Nelson is a contemporary landscape painter. Seeking and finding a sense of place is at the heart of her practice, which she describes as experimental but strongly connected to the physicality of the Australian landscape.
Dan originally studied at the University of Newcastle as a fine arts printmaker, but in 1994 an experiment with monotypes (making a print from a wet painting on metal) sparked her interest in paint. This grounding in printmaking processes and aesthetics continues to inform her approach as a painter.
“I tend to work in sequences, painting on several surfaces at once. Together, the works form a sort of cinema of mood, weather, light and season. This practice probably stems as much from things I learnt from the repetitive, mutative nature of the printmaking process as it does from the traditions of landscape painting.”