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Q: If you look really closely, you can see words on the sculptures. What are those? A: They are screen-printed affirmations … each sculpture has its own affirmation, such as “Really amazing,” “Everything will be okay,” “Everything here is wonderful.” Kelly Huang for The Arizona Republic  Click here to read.

“When placed together these columns of various width, resemble a forest. they appear as 3D manifestations of his 2D works, almost as if they have stepped out of the paintings.” Jenna Duncan for JAVA Magazine.
Click here to read.

“Both comic and menacing, smart and dumb, This array of decorous patterns revel in materiality.”
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“These two works (one 2-d and one 3-d) conjure iconic folk art forms and imagery that touch on the sectarian and socially mish-mashed nature of the Arizona experience.” Click here to view exhibition.

New American Paintings, Publisher’s pick, June 7, 2012. “Bluntly rendered, the work is textured with ghostly pentimenti, the hint of submerged words bleeding through a milky layered ground.” Click here for Review.

Number 51 on the New Times “100 Creatives” list.
“Good work should always … have small isolated figures, fragmented heads, shadow play, words, flowers and small animals.”   Click here to read interview.

“Nelson’s work is at once urban and rustic, unsettling and folksy—reminiscent of San Francisco’s Mission School in the ’90s.” Rani Molla. Click here to read.

“By manipulating the relationship between form and symbolism, Nelson encourages viewers to create connections, to assert their own ideas and interpretations. Each painting is a visual crossword or jigsaw puzzle; the rich symbolic metaphors both idiosyncratic and universal.”   Click here for Review.

“Painting is a language that is more devious than words, more free to imply and allude, to strike out one way and then circle back, keeping disparate intentions alive. The ambiguous is intrinsically more interesting to me. It forces reexamination and adds tension.” Two new pieces will be appearing in volumes 19 and 20 of Studio Visit Magazine, to be released this winter. See pages 122 and 123.   Click here  to download volume 19.

“His paintings, drawings, sculptures and video all prokoke a zany delight, thus leading the viewer into Nelson’s own paradoxically jokey view of the universe” Page 34. Click here to read.