Val Nelson: PHANTOM DNA

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Val Nelson, "Phantom DNA," 2021

oil, 6' x 8'

Val Nelson: PHANTOM DNA

Opening reception: Saturday, April 9 | 2pm – 4pm.

Artist talk: Saturday April 23 | 2pm.

Looking to travel around the world without leaving the Lower Mainland? Want to step back in time and experience those magnificent eras and lifestyles of years gone by? Then upcoming exhibition PHANTOM DNA with well-known artist Val Nelson is the one to attend. Taking place at Visual Space Gallery on Dunbar, this collection of paintings and drawings was four years in the making. The paintings depict a variety of historical European interiors including Paris, Berlin, and Venice. Settings Nelson finds fascinating, she said:

These spaces were designed to create an emotional reaction of awe and inspiration. I am in amazed myself that humans could create and invent such incredible spaces. The artworks in this exhibition encompass the ever-changing moods and impulses that ignite my studio process. Seeming to depict decayed palace interiors and a romantic Parisian landscape, stylistically these works range from an almost obsessive realism, to fuzzy dreamlike images that barely come together, to the wild abandon of joyously free mark-making.

One of the only landscape works in the collection is a distant view of Paris that took Nelson several years to create. The chaotic traffic in the mid-ground was completed with tiny brushes, signaling her love of semi abstract line, while capturing the electric pace of this iconic city. Nelson said, “As I work, I am always searching for a structure that isrecognizable yet does not allow itself to be locked down—that hovers in that areabetween knowing and not knowing. Form is the phantom, and I am the spark. “

The largest piece in the collection, PHANTOM DNA, measures an impressive six by eight feet and showcases the Painted Hall, in Derbyshire, UK. Nelson wants people to feel as though they could walk right into it. She said, “I really enjoy depicting space. Perhaps that comes from my dancer days and the make-believe quality of these spaces. The paintings in this collection are very atmospheric and theatrical, like stage sets.”