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Evan Nesbit

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Evan Nesbit’s (b. 1985; based in Nevada City, CA) paintings expand his process of rendering space and depth through illusionistic visual cues, forming works inserted between the boundaries of experience and reality. Nesbit uses pattern, color and material relationships to challenge the pictorial space of painting's modes of perception. For the artist, painting is an attempt through material and process to capture space and light in estranged recognition. The artist's new work continues this interest in material-based abstraction and concepts of perceptual psychology with an expanded color palette and tight compositions.

His paintings are made by manipulating acrylic paint through the warp and weft of burlap textiles to create works that fold textured paint surfaces within the woven structure of the substrate to capture a kind of performative gesture in the making of each piece. The burlap is often dyed in pieces and sewn together to make the complete canvas for the work. Evan starts his paintings by selecting burlap - a found object - which he then treats and hand dyes. Smaller pieces are often one piece of burlap canvas; larger canvases may contain multiple pieces hand sewn together to form one surface. Evan then ‘pushes’ acrylic paint through the weave of the burlap; the result is a sculptural surface where the paint takes on its final form. While the process is itself controlled, the end result is subject to chance, or randomness - at times the paint barely comes through the fabric, other times it beads on the surface, forming sculptural shapes.

Nesbit received his MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT. In 2012, he received the Ely Harwood Schless Memorial Fund Prize from Yale University.