georgiana nehl

Like so many bits of information circling around each other, each tidbit contains the opportunity to evoke a reference, memory, sense, or perhaps even a story. As we rest in the center of our possible knowing, what spins around the periphery of our understanding?

Much like my series Centering, this group of paintings employs numerous little details that may (or may not) add up to create a whole, but hopefully will inspire questions for you.

And here, notions of what is greatly large or quite small, and what encompasses or contains us and informs us, are what I have built these paintings around – compositionally, conceptually, but also in my own metaphysical musings.

At the point I began this ongoing series, images of circles kept surfacing for me – plates, spheres, medicine wheels – with the implied circle creating two spaces: an interior space surrounded by ‘everything’ else. Related to that notion, I have always been curious about how to create a contemplative image – a visual space where one is repeatedly called back to a still center, without disavowing the more chaotic world in which we live. The paintings in this body of work are a deep dive for me into those two elements – circles that have actively become mandalas and the invitation to a calm respite amidst the noise.

In many of these paintings I collage together bits of adjacent imagery – found, appropriated, interpreted, invented. In these little areas I use a varied range of image and style to provide a chorus of contrasting voices and possible clues to potential questions. In other paintings, more recognizable objects are captured, crowding their pictorial space. Yet, within these more representational works, there is a similar compositional objective: to invite the viewer to explore the image field but continually return to a central place of rest.

Though I have built all of these paintings around my own personal narratives and ideas, I hope their combination of color, texture, symbol, and metaphor might evoke curiosities, questions, or even oblique little stories of your own.

My long-standing improvisational movement/dance and mindfulness practices help inform my own sense of place in this world. They also give me an important ground for my metaphysical musings and understandings – from the inside out. These large format charcoal drawings pull from this pool of somatic experiences and from my own occasional ‘kinesthetic vision’ – feeling and revealing the vibrations I experience around and within myself, as if through my sense of sight, which can often present as a quality of light.

In these images, I am interested in visually capturing not only what is going on inside my own body, but also what transpires between myself and another: spatially, energetically, and with a sense of mystery and magic – in seriousness and, sometimes, with a wry, cosmic sense of humor. I have found that to see what is not usually seen in normal consensual reality can open doors for some interesting, open-ended questioning. For example: How can I court ‘seeing’ through senses other than my eyes? and What else around myself can it be possible to more fully embody?

Many thanks to photographer Blue Mitchell for his expertise in helping me to create reference images for these drawings.

My intrigue with the synchronicity, power, and implied imagery of the Taoist I-Ching: Book of Changes inspired these eight paintings.

Put simply, the I-Ching is a complex series of 64 phases (hexagrams) giving counsel on how to live in harmony with this world. Along with verbal cues, there are numerous symbols and images offered in varied translations of this age-old guidance system, and I used some of these as references for my starting points. From there I intuitively (and humbly) worked to better understand the ‘landscapes’ of these eight perspectives; interpreting each as to where one might stand in order to perceive one’s place in the world at that particular point in time.

My own imagery, and my inclusion of metaphor and symbol, were derived from a blend of some of the elements I discovered from classic I-Ching’s interpretations, plus what I personally desired to bring visually to that long-standing conversation. Not intended to be directly illustrative of the eight I-Ching hexagrams from which I sourced, I hope these paintings will stand as metaphorical windows through which the viewer can muse.

The act of improvisational drawing is especially intriguing for me – putting marks and surfaces down on paper, then using subtractive processes to carve out, and possibly reveal, elements I had not known I was headed towards making. In this series of graphite drawings, I found the simple and repeated act of layering and erasure disclosed imagery that, while occasionally deeply surprising me, also felt quite true and close to home.

During my journey through creating this series of drawings, a resonant convergence of place and personal symbology emerged. The resulting images reflect salient elements of my life at the time (most notably as references to my somatic experiences from an avid yoga practice), that could be found visually nested within the peaks of the Oregon Cascades where my family had created Earth ceremonies for several years.

Questions such as: How is our body a vessel for knowledge? How is movement embedded in stillness? and even simply, What is actually true? all visually emerged in the making of this transitional body of work.

Most paintings and drawings are inherently intended to be received only through our eyes. But I am always curious by what happens when an image transforms into a fuller, and interactive, three-dimensional presence. In these works – given permission to not only touch but also to rearrange the various elements – participants can create their own relationships from all of the various parts. And, by tapping into each person’s engagement with touch while following their own impulses as to how to interact with these small forms, a wonderful sense of play often emerges.

Color-Play, a set of 121 two-inch blocks, with printed images on all sides. These little three-dimensional objects are meant to be handled and re-arranged into numerous configurations. As there is no predetermined ‘solution’ to find, they become more of a toy, or perhaps a game, than a puzzle. Rather, the experiencer is invited to play with them and to discover what relationships and stories they, personally, are called to make by setting colors, images and references side-by-side.

Elemental, a puzzle of 25 color- and word-coded wooden blocks, that may be rearranged in endless combinations. While small groups of the 25 can be set adjacent perhaps nudging their own collective story-ideas, each individual block reveals several clues to guide a player to discover a greater whole that contains all of its parts.

Toy Box is really akin to a child’s magic storage bin. Just as its straight-forward title implies, this box can be opened from its four lids to present tempting objects with which to play.

Circular Ceremony is a simple book in a box that may be lifted out and opened into a medicine wheel landscape. As participants unfold this set of four sequential ‘pages’, they are presented with a single word on each – begin, become, risk, know – clues which might name that territory on the ceremonial arena. Recesses in the box’s interior contain numerous made and found objects which offer infinite movement and relationship potentials upon this playing field.

A chance visit to a very small display room in the Egyptian exhibit of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum was the nudge for this group of four drawings. At the Met I found myself enchanted by how all those tiny, crowded relics were displayed on numerous layers of glass and mirrored shelves, then reflected back from the echoing, mirrored wall. This reverberation and density of shapes, colors, and details felt like my personal idea of the physical world in which we exist – that there is no ‘empty’ space that surrounds forms. Energy and being fills it all.

While the little room in the museum that had originally inspired me has since been quieted, my compositions in this quartet became filled, edge-to-edge, and hinting at, a somewhat paradoxical, visual depth.

Uniting the work around the concept of the four elements – fire, water, air and earth – I played with how that familiar cycle might be represented via symbol, metaphor, and form. And within each drawing I scattered little bits of my own biography to question notions of how my own small self might fit into this large universal theme.

A box of black and white photographs my mother handed to me from my first ten years inspired this group of drawings. Musing back upon my childhood, with those little paper records in hand, I began recalling not only the spaces and narratives that surrounded that earlier world, but also objects, colors, smells, and – especially – qualities of light. With the realism captured in these colored pencil drawings I aim to create a pictorial scene into which one could imagine reaching, even while each image is embedded with subtle manipulations of spatial truth.

And while these images have been drawn from my own intimate memory pool, I invite you into them. Perhaps they will speak to your own sense of history, of time and place, or create a bit of story that you can build yourself from all of their puzzle-piece parts.

The Lexicon Series – a collaboration between myself and artist Lynda Lowe – involved passing small (7” x 5”) gessoed papers back and forth through the mail. Working with improvisation in starting, then responding, and then bringing the paintings to completion, each of us had our hands on all of the one hundred works in this group. In order to expand their meaning potential, we placed a single word embedded into each painting along the vertical axis.

Both of us brought to this project a mutual fascination with the notion of the unconscious, the power of objects and marks to evoke meaning, and a broad source of symbols. The full project evolved over the course of a year and during that time the synergy of adding new images became both a compelling dialogue and an experience in developing a shared language – between ourselves and also among the different paintings.

The full set of one hundred premiered at Portland’s Nine Gallery, then travelled to the Chicago Cultural Center and the El Paso Museum of Art, as well as to numerous college and university campus galleries across the country.

In these exhibitions, the paintings were exhibited in either a linear sequence or a grid format, yet their positions were not ultimately intended to stay in any one fixed order. We discovered that when a piece was viewed with different neighbors, new relationships could easily prompt new meanings, suggest additional metaphors, and provide interesting repetitions and contrasts.

In addition to the installation grid of the full project (shown here), I have included eight of the one hundred individual paintings so that you may enjoy a few in greater detail.

Guardian: Under the Lovejoy Ramp – was commissioned by the Portland Visual Chronicles Project, a city-owned collection of works on paper that focuses on artists’ views of the city’s social and urban landscapes. For this mixed-media work I wanted to capture and honor train night-watchman Tom Stefopoulos’s chalk and paint murals created between 1948 and 1952 on several of the cement columns undergirding the (then) Lovejoy Ramp at NW 10th St. in Portland. That area of the city was fast being demolished and gentrified and his columns seemed destined to be destroyed. In addition to two of his images, I chose to show elements that begin to document pieces of that larger story. Happily, many of Stefopoulos’s columns were able to be preserved and relocated not far from where he originally created them.

Reflections – Portland Center Stage, a sister theater company to Ashland’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival, was founded in 1988. To honor the birth of Center Stage, I was invited to create a drawing that would be both added to their collection and subsequently published as to-scale, full-color prints. To gather ideas I was allowed to wander into every area of the Shakespeare Festivals’ grounds, including backstage. Amidst all of the splendor that this enterprise presented, it was the actors’ dressing tables that captivated me the most. The quirky and very idiosyncratic accumulations of objects and photographs seemed to reflect an integral spirit embodied in this theatre.

Invitation – This colored pencil drawing was also commissioned with an intent for both acquisition and publication through large scale prints. Trade Litho, a Portland-based printing house, desired a special and elegant gift for their supporters and clients at an event entitled ‘Orchids and Oysters’.