Kelly Neidig
I was born in Coraopolis, a small borough of Pittsburgh, PA. My favorite memories are of the long car rides to my grandparents’ house in the country. I loved staring out the window watching the landscape zoom by. There I would sit next to my Pap at the dining room table and draw. After highschool I attended the Pennsylvania State University as a Landscape Architecture student. I spent two years learning how to create and interpret the environment before my desire for art led me to the Integrative Arts program. I was able to use my Landscape background as a foundation for a degree in Art. After graduation I moved to Phoenix, AZ and spent 3 ½ years exploring the southwest and gaining inspiration from the vast open desert. In 2005 my longing for rain, grass and trees led me to the Portland, OR. Here, I am an active member of the local art community and a participant in several charity events. Elements of the Pacific Northwest strongly appear in my paintings, yet they also reflect colors and memories from the place I have lived and traveled.My education in Landscape Architecture influences the subject and execution of my work. I was taught to investigate the landscape by its social, ecological, and geographical features and to analyze man’s influence on the land. My concern is with the negative impact construction and consumption has on the beauty and specific character of the landscape. As a child growing up in Southwestern Pennsylvania I saw the landscape stripped away for mining. Here in the Pacific Northwest deforestation and the replanting of monocultures alter the landscape. Urban Sprawl is a global problem. Box stores, strip malls, manufactured housing developments, and other monotonous structures do not take into consideration the geographical characteristics that are unique to a place. My work symbolizes these changes that happen to a place over time.
I gain inspiration from my immediate surroundings, yet much of my interaction with the landscape happens inside an automobile where glimpses of nature are caught through the sprawl. As I dissect the landscape in my mind, I become nostalgic for an unaltered version of the landscape. My work becomes a blueprint of an idealistic landscape.
In the studio I rely on my memory to reconstruct the landscape. I focus on the colors that are unique and specific to place. Applying basic design principles, foreground, middle ground, horizon, and perspective, I reduce the landscape to its simplest form. I find a correlation between the way time effects my memories and place. Just as a landscape changes over time and gets stripped away of its individual characteristics, the details of my memories fade as time passes. The overall affect is catching a glimpse of something as it quickly slips away.
I gain inspiration from my immediate surroundings, yet much of my interaction with the landscape happens inside an automobile where glimpses of nature are caught through the sprawl. As I dissect the landscape in my mind, I become nostalgic for an unaltered version of the landscape. My work becomes a blueprint of an idealistic landscape.
In the studio I rely on my memory to reconstruct the landscape. I focus on the colors that are unique and specific to place. Applying basic design principles, foreground, middle ground, horizon, and perspective, I reduce the landscape to its simplest form. I find a correlation between the way time effects my memories and place. Just as a landscape changes over time and gets stripped away of its individual characteristics, the details of my memories fade as time passes. The overall affect is catching a glimpse of something as it quickly slips away.
