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Printer-Friendly ModeArtist speaks of influences in lecture
October 31, 2005 —
Gladys Nilsson, Imagist watercolor artist and a founding member of the Chicago "Hairy Who," spoke Wednesday in the Rhea Miller Recital Hall to an audience of SVSU students and faculty, community members, and high school students. Her lecture, "Personal Foibles: A Pursuit of Amuse from Pillar to Post," was the third in the 2005 Fall Focus series.
Born and raised in Chicago, Nilsson presented herself as both imaginative and down-to-earth. Her talk consisted mainly of her comments on a set of slides that depicted her works and inspirations, including art she "found a resonance with" and influences from outside of the art world.
Afterwards, she took questions from the audience, then held a book signing in Groening Commons.
Nilsson spoke of how she became interested in watercolor during her last semester in art school. "Oil painting was the medium of choice," she said. "It wasn't until I got married and was looking forward to the birth of my child [that I began with watercolors]. I decided that the use of turpentine and oil would be very hard on delicate young baby skin. I was encouraged by a faculty member to experiment with some watercolor, so I sort of began to fool around with watercolors seriously."
She soon discovered that she really enjoyed watercolor. "I liked working on paper," she explained. "It kind of struck a chord with me. I always seek out different papers to experiment with, different watercolors, and so on."
She also spoke about her experiences with the Hairy Who.
"We were a group of six people," she said. "We were included in a lot of group exhibitions at the Hyde Park art center. We were all young artists that did not have the amount of work where, for instance, one could have said 'oh, we want to do a one-person show.' That's a big responsibility, and it was a lot easier for us to be a group -- one of six with 10-15 works [rather] than to be one [artist] with 40 works.
She gave the audience some insights into the roots of her style. She spoke of watching "Popeye" as a child, and how she came to love the appearance of Olive Oyl.
"I sort of adopted her," she said. The design is apparent in her art: exaggerated characters with blocky bodies and long, rubbery arms and legs. Nilsson spoke of her appreciation of simplified figure presentation.
She also said that she was intrigued "by all facets of culture."
"I amuse myself first, but I think my work also makes a statement on certain issues without being very blatant about it," she said. "I like to be very quiet and very sly about a lot of things; sometimes less so than other things. Mainly I am dealing with things that intrigue me, that interest me; certain dynamics. I look at dialogue that goes on between groups of people and I find I file a lot of things away in my mind."
Nilsson explained that she will use images that can be seen by just observing: people at the airport, people in the grocery store, people in an audience.
"I am an observer of the human condition, whatever that might be," she said.
She also commented on her art series, which she based around central themes such as Star Trek, and the adventures that occur while shopping. She said that she was often "voyeuristic" with her work and that she loved the opportunity to invent new clothing designs with her work.
Nilsson also spoke about her first steps into the world of watercolor art.
"I didn't have any formal training in how to paint watercolor," she explained. "Anything that I do with it is something that I have arrived at over the course of time through use of the material and learning what it is that I want to do with it. I spent at least two years learning how to do it before I felt comfortable saying, "Oh look, I did this piece."
This, however, did not keep her from putting her early work in any show she could find.
"You never turn down a wall if it's offered to you," she said.
Nilsson's work is currently featured at the University Art Gallery, in an exhibition entitled "Neo/Nouveau/Retro-Watercolors, Paperhanging, and Other Various and Sundry Items."