Bruce Nellsmith

Edisto Island, SC

I maintain a studio in Quillan, France and a studio on Edisto Island, SC. I am a resident of SC, although I spend part of every year working in France. Time spent in France has an indelible influence on my work, the open-air markets and architecture inform many of my cityscapes and market paintings. I am also interested in the calm, self assured, and respectful demeanor of the French people which I hope is captured in my work. I use color and composition not to capture something that is fleeting as an impressionist might, but to explore something beyond the tangible to imbue the paintings with a sense of poetry. I believe in beauty as a form of truth as Keats spoke of it, but what must be beautiful is not simply the subject, it must be the handling of paint on the surface, the composition, the drawing. I have a fascination for the Bauhaus- like cityscapes of America, yet I tend to soften the architecture, to make it more organic, perhaps to let the paint "play" on the surface.

Artist Website

brucenellsmith.com