Charlene Nield
The Artist
My paintings emerge from what I call “the space between,” a place suspended between the mounting pressures of contemporary life and the heightened drama of the world around us. It is a space where lightness, whimsy, and joy still reside, where vivid colors and playful patterns can reclaim attention from chaos. Working in layers, I build each piece with heavy underpainting and fragments of collage, allowing the history beneath to inform the surface. I often scratch through layers to reveal what came before, or leave windows into the past within the background, suggesting memory and continuity. My figurative subjects, often women in contemplation or men offering small gestures like flowers, celebrate the quiet poetry of the everyday. Rendered faceless and, at times, without defined markers of gender, race, or ethnicity, these figures are open to interpretation. They invite viewers to become participants in the work, completing the image through their own imagination and internal dialogue.
