NANCY SIMONDS

Nancy Simonds makes large-scale abstract gouache paintings on paper. In each of her block stack and ovoid series different arrangements of blocks, ovals and colors create a feeling of transcendent order. These images are anti-chaos. All strive for a connection to a moment for reflection, a moment of resolution and calm. Her gouache works feature luxuriant protean color and are infused with sublime soft texture.

In her ovoid series, squares without edges, she enjoys the play of organic shapes against the white of the background creating tension as the ovals touch or separate in varying degrees. These images reflect velvety textures such as moss covered earth as well as disparate edges, sizes and patterns coexisting in nature. Each shape is drawn and carved out by the edge of the brush.

Nancy Simonds is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She maintains a studio in the South End of Boston. Her work has been shown at the Butler Museum of American Art, the Danforth Museum and the University of Maine Museum of Art. Simonds work is part of over 50 corporate collections. Her work is shown at galleries in Nantucket and Boston, Massachusetts; Concord, New Hampshire; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In painting each piece there is an experience of exhilaration and renewal. In each painting I stack and pile simple shapes, placing then sizing and creating visual relationships that build to larger rhythms. My best paintings work like Japanese haiku; each image is paired down to its essentials and each becomes a complete world of its own. In these paintings I aim for an effect deeper than the joy of beautiful surface and color; I want to generate visual places, points of departure for states of serenity and contemplation.

~Nancy Simonds