Nancy Scheinman

As the viewer shifts positions, the light changes, time passes, and the luster of the jewel-like copper surface fluctuates, exposing layers of images not immediately seen. The abstract and the concrete, the expected and the unexpected combine to convey a complex narrative. Mystery and secrets worked and woven with paint, metals, canvas, nails and tacks into layers slowly revealed to the viewer. If you could look under the layers perhaps you would find several paintings, with many stories. The repetitive nailing as I work keeps me focused — grounded, linking me to the spiritual aspects of “women’s work.” The geometric arrangement of the compositional elements of my work is not unlike quilts women have pieced together as part of the domestic experience for many years. Fabric, sheets of copper, bronze wire cloth, paper, canvas and antique tin are cut and collaged together, literally connecting the past with the present through the materials themselves.

As a visual storyteller, I weave together personal narratives, private dreams and internalized landscapes remembered from travels. I also incorporate photographs taken in places that hold special meaning, which are printed on copper and wire cloth. The wood panel I begin with is primed with the color of heat I see on my closed eyes when raised toward the sun. Copper sheets are hand embossed, washed with acid, the resulting patina cured then sealed, and finally nailed over a wooden support and painted. The images presented in part rely on an element of chance due to the materials employed. The acid washes are subject in color and shape to the temperature, humidity and my application. I allow the sensuous marks and stains formed by the acid to help determine the images that emerge. Employing both an additive and subtractive process, the paintings evolve as collaged materials are put on and at times subsequently removed or moved.

I do not know what my paintings will look like before I begin, as they seem to emerge in a magical, intuitive manner. My landscape paintings present a sense of place, paying homage to historical landscape painting and challenge the notion of such paintings with a combination of painted nature and real natural processes.