Jan Nelson facts for kids

Jan Nelson (born in 1955) is an Australian artist. She creates sculptures, photographs, and paintings. She is famous for her very realistic pictures of teenagers. Her art has been shown in Australia, Paris, and Brazil.

Her artworks are in important Australian galleries. These include the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her art is also at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane. She even represented Australia at a big art show in São Paulo, Brazil.

Early Life and Art School

Nelson was born in Melbourne in 1955. She studied art at the Victorian College of the Arts. She finished her studies there in 1983.

In 2018, she earned a special degree called a PhD from Deakin University. Her studies focused on how painting can stay important in a world full of digital art.

Her Art Career

When Jan Nelson first started painting, she explored landscapes. In the 1980s, she looked at how people use and share spaces. She also made drawings using crayons.

Later in the 1980s, Nelson started thinking about women's roles in society. She explored how women sometimes felt unseen. Her art at this time included traditional crafts like plaster work and basket weaving.

From 1989 to 1991, Nelson created a series of artworks called The Long Century.

In her 2000 work, International Behaviour, she used a photo of people from Vietnam on boats. She put this photo on a background of bright, colorful patterns. In 1994, Nelson showed sculptures that looked like the Grand Canyon and the Amazon jungle. These were simple shapes placed on stands. Even then, art critics noticed her dramatic style.

Hyper-Realistic Paintings

Nelson's more recent artworks look incredibly real. They are so smooth and perfect, like pictures you see in advertisements or magazines. Her art often shows young people. These pictures explore the space between their inner thoughts and what they want.

Nelson's most famous series is Walking in Tall Grass. These are portraits of teenagers. She worked on this series for fifteen years, finishing in 2016.

How She Creates Portraits

Nelson started by taking photos of people she knew and even strangers. She used these photos to create her paintings. Sometimes, she would combine parts from different photos. For example, she might use a head from one person and a body from another.

When she paints these portraits, Nelson uses very bright colors. She often paints reflections in the eyes or sunglasses of the people. To make her art even more vibrant, she sometimes paints the gallery walls in bright colors too.

Each young person in her paintings is dressed in a unique way. Their clothes and accessories show their own style and the fashion of the time. However, each person looks away from the viewer. This suggests they are thinking deeply or are unsure about their future. Nelson once said that walking in tall grass means you can only go forward, even if you can't see where you are going.

What Her Art Means

Jan Nelson's art is full of strong feelings and colors. It often shows a mix of fear and strength. Her work is influenced by her own teenage years in the 1970s. That was a time of big social and cultural changes.

Nelson uses different art forms, like painting, sculpture, and photography. She also creates art installations. Her work focuses on how what we see helps us understand ourselves as we grow up. Her art is both attractive and a bit unsettling. It shows how things are always changing.

Exploring Change in Art

Nelson's art often tells stories about important moments. These are times of change and transformation. For example, in the 1990s, her paintings explored famous modern art ideas.

In the early 2000s, Nelson began her very realistic and colorful painting series, Walking in Tall Grass. A curator named Rachel Kent said that Nelson's paintings are very clear. She paints her subjects carefully from photos she takes herself.

The young people in Walking in Tall Grass are very individual. They have unique features, clothes, and accessories. But they don't look directly at the viewer. This "disconnect" might show how teenagers often think to themselves and avoid adult attention.

Nelson often combines parts of different people in her digital art. She might use the head of one person and the arms of another. This makes the painting go beyond a simple photo. It creates a "hyper-reality" with strong colors and feelings. Nelson says this makes the painting "vibrate." She sometimes shows these works on hand-painted striped walls. This adds an abstract, colorful contrast to the figures in the paintings.

Art and Real Life

In 2013, her exhibition Strange Days connected ideas from the 1970s to the Occupy Melbourne protests. These protests were about local environmental issues. Nelson's art showed the energy of real life. It also explored the feelings of being vulnerable and defiant.

The exhibition included three artworks. Each was a life-size copy of real objects. For example, Defiance was a copy of a water barrier. Police used these barriers during the Occupy Melbourne protest. One barrier was left alone inside the protest camp. This single barrier became a symbol of how power comes when people work together. A street artist later added graffiti to Nelson's Defiance. This showed how people can reclaim things.

For Nelson, the act of making art by hand is important. It shows the difference between trying to be perfect and the reality of being human. She says that the meaning of her work is in the process. It's where handmade art meets industrial precision. She aims to show the worries and struggles of modern life through her art.

Awards and Recognition

• 1983–1984 Received a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. This helped her stay at the Owen Tooth Cottage in Vence, France.
• 1984–1985 Received another grant from the Australian Council for the Arts.
• 1986 Was an Artist in Residence at the Victorian College of the Arts.
• 2003–2004 Received an Australia Council grant.
• 2004 Won the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize at the National Gallery of Victoria.
• 2009 Won the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize at the Bendigo Art Gallery. This was for her painting Walking in Tall Grass (Tom).

Where Her Art Is Kept

Jan Nelson's artworks are part of many important collections:

• Art Gallery of New South Wales
• Bendigo Art Gallery
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
• National Gallery of Victoria
• National Gallery of Australia
• Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art
• Art Gallery Western Australia
• Monash University Museum of Art
• Ian Potter Museum of Art
• Heide Museum of Modern Art