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P.A.
Nisbet: Stone, Light and Space – Paintings of The Grand
Canyon Opens 09/04/09
Santa Fe, NM—Painter P.A. Nisbet (b. 1948) is calling
2009 “the year of the Grand Canyon.” For over
thirty-five years he has explored the Canyon in every
way possible: backpacking, rafting the Colorado, riding
on mule back, and touring by aircraft. This access has
given him vantage points that are not available to most
visiting the Canyon. He has created several new works
that now give us access to these views through his eyes
and incredible skill. The Meyer East Gallery is excited
to offer P.A. Nisbet: Stone, Light, and Space: Paintings
of the Grand Canyon, opened September 4, 2009 with a
reception for the artist.
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Bright Angel Trail
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Raven's View (Grand
Canyon National Park) |
Winter Light, Grand Canyon
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Peter Nisbet suffers for his art…literally. Just as the
painter J.M.W. Turner lashed himself to the mast of a
ship, Nisbet swam the rapids at mile 215 on the Colorado
River, in the middle of the Grand Canyon, finding some
of the scenes that he using as material for his new
show. “I was a drowned rat,” says Nisbet. “I was
hyperventilating and overwhelmed. But now I understand
the waves.” This has given him an incredible perspective
of the Canyon and inspiration this year’s show.
This year his work will be featured at the Modern
Masters Invitational Exhibition to be held this
September at the historic Kolb Studio perched on the
South Rim of the park. Recently, Nisbet's work was
exhibited alongside the likes of Thomas Moran and Ansel
Adams at the Tucson Museum of Art during their landmark
Grand Canyon Exhibition "From Dream to Icon: The Grand
Canyon". This exhibition reopened at the Museum of South
Texas in Corpus Christie last April. " The Grand Canyon
presents the artist of every generation with the
greatest challenge in landscape painting", says Nisbet.
"My intention is to bring forth that perfect moment when
light and canyon open into pure wonderment. Painting is
the vehicle through which I experience a deep and
satisfying personal relationship with big Nature, and it
doesn't get any bigger than the Grand Canyon."
The self-taught master landscape artist is a Santa Fe
local. His painting Light Storm, Taos won the Henry
Farny Award for Best Painting last fall at the Eiteljorg
Museum’s third annual invitational.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina,
he joined the Navy and, based in California, spent all
his leave time exploring the Grand Canyon and Sonoran
Desert. Nisbet eventually moved to Scottsdale and
finally mastered clouds, canyons, water, waves, and sky,
all while surviving the perils of Mother Nature. Once,
in Yosemite, a lightning bolt swooped out of the clouds,
and static electricity hurled the painting-in-progress
off his easel. In Antarctica, a pod of penguins waddled
up to his camp at 3 am and watched him sketch. On the
coast of Oregon, Nisbet was almost knocked off his feet
by rogue waves. Luckily, he managed to save his
7-by-10-inch Study for Cape Kiwanda, beside the much
larger and more luminous end result: Cape Kiwanda.
Before starting a sketch in the field, Nisbet walks the
landscape for an hour or more. Then he paints small
sketches " a sort of visual shorthand" on masonite or
sections of pre-cut, rolled canvas that he tacks onto a
board. When finished, they dry in a box. Back in the
studio, the field sketches inspire larger paintings that
are created with multiple layers of paint and glaze.
In his Santa Fe studio, Nisbet translates his outdoor
quests into oils on canvas using Old Master glazing
techniques which he mixes himself. The studio, which was
the former residence of American social realist painter
John Sloan (1874-1951), On an easel in the middle of the
old adobe often sits a gray study of a painting in a
grey scale; below it is a pile of rocks which he uses as
inspiration to mix his colors. “By manipulating shapes
and dominant angles, and creating dominant rhythms, I
try to move the eye into periods of relaxation and
contemplation. The point is to hold the eye.” To finish
at least ten more in time for his Grand Canyon opening
at the gallery this August, Nesbit will take two to four
more trips to the national park.
Nisbet’s willingness to get out in the elements is only
half the reason his work is featured in high-profile
places, like on the cover of Leading the West. It was
published in 1997 and contains one hundred top non-urban
Western representational painters and sculptors.
“The truth of it,” says Nisbet, “is that painting is
just a path. It’s like being a priest or an explorer.
It’s a way of journeying toward a piece of knowledge
that you really want. I’m nowhere near the level of
J.M.W. Turner, but maybe I’ll paint one or two paintings
that can stand next to his by the time I’m dead.”
Through September 18, 2009. Meyer East Gallery,
225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe.
www.meyereastgallery.com
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