@ Catalyst Gallery

137 Main St

Beacon, NY 12508

Elijah Wheat Showroom is daring to present landscape-like works spanning the course of Liz Nielsen’s 20-year photographic and artistic career. The title is suggestive of the subtle scent of the Earth after a light rain. Oils from plants interact with the dry rocks as an aerosol disperses into the atmosphere. Just as chemical liquid interactions mixed with light are integral to the process of photography, so is the harmony of the gentle eco-system of this terrestrial land. With petrichor, one walks into the landscape, with a keener consciousness, now surrounded by the aroma and the brighter colors of an interactive nature.

Liz Nielsen’s prolific career spans two decades and encompasses varying experiments in photography along with incredibly fluid, yet ever-changing processes. Known for her large-scale camera-less light paintings and photograms, this show departs from the expected and enters a history through the lens. Works shown here will connect the early camera shots and compositions to the more contemporary modern ab-ex photos the artist has created in the darkroom.  Intermixed images will prove how the landscape and horizon often inform her imagery and where future and alien landscapes interlude to beckon a playful yet thoughtful view of shapes, forms, and perspectives often unsettling the geographic Earth as humans experience.

An early eye, first focuses on representational relationships between the landscape, shapes and subject within the ‘Cuba Series’. Yet, her shooting still holds the creative fields of life’s vibrations interacting inside the camera. The moment she chooses to allow light to enter the lens, color moves the spatial landscape in the ‘Deep Space Series’. As Nielsen’s vibrant palette slowly becomes an understood language, she shifts the viewers’ point of view; her voice becomes stronger, more uniquely forceful, as abstractions proliferate the imagery.

Please join us for a first-time walk through discovering an introspective collection of work that displays bold Earthly and far-out cosmic landscapes processes from the lens. Then notice a contrasting saturation of expressionistic abstract color after an unflinching, yet subtle rain of creative success mastering the physics of light in the darkroom.