Richard Christian Nelson

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Website: http://richardchristiannelson.com/

Rich is a a portrait and gallery artist residing with his wife Kim in the mountains of North Carolina. As a signature member of the Portrait Society Of America and the Oil Painters Of America, he also loves painting landscape, still life, and figurative gallery pieces, usually from life. He is endlessly fascinated by people, places, and things and considers it a privilege and a challenge to capture some aspect of their essence on canvas.

Nelson works toward ‘painterly realism’; good drawing and composition, rendered with strong natural color, in such a way that you can still ‘sense’ or ‘feel’ the paint. The effect of this process is that the subject begins to artfully reveal itself to the artist, and hopefully, the viewer.

The Nelsons are from Detroit, Michigan, where Rich earned his BFA from the College of Creative Studies in 1988. It was at CCS that he developed his love of painting, drawing, figurative art, and art history. Nelson has been working as a portrait and gallery artist, and occasional instructor since graduating. 

“I strive to do museum quality work that will be around long after my subjects and I have left this world.”

In over 20 years as a professional artist Nelson has completed over 500 oil portraits, 1000 charcoal portraits, sold many gallery paintings, had a number of one-person shows, and won a number of awards