Art in the Lobby
Kristen Nelson
Aquatint Etchings
Kristen Nelson is an American printmaker currently living and working in Italy. She graduated with a degree in Studio Art from Suffolk University in Boston Massachusetts. During the summer, she spends her time at her family’s house in Acadia National Park. Her work consists primarily of Aquatint etchings that explore belonging and the feeling of nostalgia which is depicted through the interplay between light and shadow. The ocean and ever-changing landscape around Acadia National Park influence her prints. By illuminating the journey towards belonging, Kristen’s artwork represents a desire to find connection amidst distance. Both the metaphorical and literal distance between a subject and the environment around them. Kristen has exhibited work in America and Europe. Many of her prints are held in both public and private collections.
These prints explore the tension between vibrant colors and the colorless human silhouette. Rich hues inspired by the natural world surround the silhouette. Color often serves as a cultural language communicating values, emotions, spirituality, belonging, and memory. When people experience displacement, they may cling more tightly to their culture in an act of remembrance or distance themselves from it because of the pain associated with leaving. In this collection, color serves as an anchor tethering the colorless human silhouette to places, memories, and emotions. Each hue is connected to a particular emotional landscape: the soft pink of nostalgia, the aggressive pull of dark red, the misty uncertainty of light green, and the stormy ache of deep blue. Including color in each piece proved to be intense and complex. Both the beauty and the tension exists at the same time and is in conversation with each other. To exhale color. To release it. To let it exist on its own terms.