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Catch Bruce Nellsmith at City Art in the Vista

By Judit Trunkos

Bruce Nellsmith presents his unusually vivid and colorful city scenes at City Art through November 10. Nellsmith, the chair of the Art department at Newberry College, offers his abstract oil paintings and color drawings portraying cities from Atlanta to Rome, including many renderings of Columbia, using vibrant colors to express the spirit of each individual city.

Nellsmith has been teaching at Newberry College since 1988 yet still carves out time from his course load to work on his own projects. For Nellsmith, places and cities can be represented by their dominant colors. For instance, he sees Columbia as a combination of two pigments: yellow-orange and blue-grey.

Though he occasionally leans toward a more abstract style in his paintings and drawings, the buildings and streets of Columbia are usually recognizable. The lively colors and the dynamic brush strokes add to the scene’s energy. As Nellsmith says, “Every stroke has to be exciting.”

“The work, as I see it, is driven by my constant [destruction],” he says. “And then I resurrect an essentially abstract vocabulary of line, color, and shape.”

The final results are large oil paintings that communicate the feeling and energy of the city as well as the artist’s interpretation of the same.

Nellsmith’s overwhelming use of bright color grabs the viewer’s attention and only releases it after the scene, the street or the city block is recognized underneath the flow of colors and shapes. His primary intention is not to reproduce a particular part of the city, but to depict what is behind the walls of buildings and to reflect the energy of the place. The dynamic compositions of his canvases add to the energy and movement of the paintings. The city is alive and in motion and Nellsmith let’s the viewer know that.

The spontaneous cityscapes are reminiscent of the American Abstract Expressionism movement, capturing the essence of a chosen place or city with unanticipated and often surprising colors, lines and shapes. Through his canvases Nellsmith allows the viewer to see how the artist perceives Columbia and through the powerful colors he shares the passion of the city, which could barely be portrayed by using only realistic colors and a more traditional style.

The exhibition can be viewed until November 10 at City Art. For more information about this show please visit http://www.cityartonline.com