Nick Peña

Holes and Slices - Nick Peña - Contemporary Landscape/Abstract Painting

2018

In POSSIBLE, IMPOSSIBLE, POSSIBLE, Peña combines representational elements of a bright green landscape in the background with a more abstracted silhouette of a house in the middle gr...

Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of ...

In BOOM BUST REPEAT17, Peña creates a silhouette of house and fills it with sharpe-edged shapes that contain gradients and saturated hues of red, green, and violet. He balances these colors with muted tones of orange and yellow . The viewer can create a house that is yet to be built in between the gaps here. In "Boom, Bust, Repeat", Peña remarks on a house and landscape that has yet to take place. The painting is created with watercolor and acrylic paint on paper. In the foreground we see Sintra board or flattened PVC that has been CNC routed. In the "soil" beneath the house are small circular lines that have been hand drawn with India ink. The Sintra board has been cut to reveal arrows in the negative space pointing upwards as to hint at a boom in the market. Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment and national psyche. The realization that both the idealistic pursuit of happiness and the relevance of painting in a technologically driven world informs his practice. With each composition the labor begins with digital composites of a fragmented American landscape in peril —where tension lies in the contrasts between past and present, analog and digital, representation and abstraction, and stability and instability. In his most recent series the American home (stability) and fragmented and shifting landscape (instability) are veiled by a digitally produced mat. Traditionally a mat is, by definition, a flat, thin piece of paper based material included within the picture frame and serves as additional decoration when framing artwork. He activates this commonly overlooked material by using a non-traditional material, Sintra (flattened sheet of PVC), that has a negative digitally drawn image cut-out. This cut-out might, at first glance, look hand cut however, a more astute viewer would realize the precision is mechanical. The mat has been transformed from inactive decoration to digitally produced veil that represents the technologically anxious precision we surround ourselves with. Nick Peña...

Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment. In "From Sea to Shining Sea" Peña takes a traditional approach to representing a house with modern architecture in what is seemingly the suburbs and contrasts the image with a more abstracted and chaotic foreground consisting of Sintra or PVC. The image is framed with a 1 inch white border. Nick Peña...

BONNIE MAYGARDEN says of her work… My work is informed by and reacts to a culture defined by a digital experience, yet the work’s imagery is created entirely by hand, using only pai...

Painting on Sculpted Canvas. An abstract illusionist work by artist Jack Reilly. After receiving his MFA from Florida State University, in 1978 Jack Re...

BONNIE MAYGARDEN says of her work… My work is informed by and reacts to a culture defined by a digital experience, yet the work’s imagery is created entirely by hand, using only pai...

Artist Commentary: Thinking of structures, I had originally tried to synthesize the glitch paintings with my screens series and built acetate sheets out from the painting. Unsatisfie...