After graduating in 1970, Nelson showed his portfolio around Los Angeles. Strong on figurative work, it landed the young artist a commission to illustrate the album cover for "Sammy Davis Jr. Live." More album covers followed (for Rick Nelson, Neil Diamond, Natalie Cole, Loretta Lynn, and Motorhead) as did numerous movie posters (for John Wayne’s The Cowboys, Paul Newman’s Slap Shot, and Disney’s Homeward Bound). These led to portrait commission from actor James Garner, playwright Neil Simon, and the dental and law schools at UCLA.

His heightened profile led Nelson back to the academic world when, in 1974, the Art Center invited him to take over Don Putman’s painting class. "I found I was a decent teacher," Nelson reflects. Not that he always told over-confident students what they wanted to hear: "Most young artists think, "Well, here I am!" I tell them that there is no quick way of becoming an artist. I don’t know anything you can excel at without working so hard that it is beyond comprehension."

In 1990, the Academy of Art University in San Francisco hired Nelson as its director of Fine Art, drawing and painting, a position he still holds and to which he commuted weekly by plane for eight years until he, his wife Anna, their daughter Sasha, and sons Brendan and Ian finally moved to Sonoma County.

The Sonoma move, however, had a more profound impetus than just the need for an easier commute. The "art by committee" he’d been successfully executing as a top-notch commercial illustrator "started driving me crazy," admits Nelson. Travels in Europe with Anna, as well as visits to museums in Los Angeles, had exposed him to the works of great American Impressionists like William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, William Paxton, John Singer Sargent, as well as those of Swedish figurative master Anders Zorn and Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla. "And here I was, going home to work on a movie poster, when I just really wanted to paint," Nelson realized.

He’d always done eight to 10 paintings a year just for himself, but in the late 1980s Nelson decided to take the summer off and devote himself to painting. The 10 works he finished during that interlude led to his first gallery representation and a determination to paint things he cared about full time.

As his canvas of vineyard workers suggest, Nelson cares about the human figure and portraying it in unexpected way. Take, for example, his recent dance studio series exemplified by DANCERS THREE (top), which feature his daughter and two of her friends. Rather than executing observe images of young women on toe or at the bare, Nelson, camera in hand, "watched and waited as they took breaks," capturing candid poses of graceful young women at their ease. "If you ask a model to pose, it looks like a pose," he said.

The same approach applies to beach scenes as YOUTHFUL REFLECTIONS (previous page, down), a contemporary tribute to the Three Graces. The ability to evoke such eloquently simple, unposed moments is also evident in other subjects Nelson favors, whether a Venice canal scene such as OUT TO DRY (down) or the natural reverie of DINING ALONE, which won him the 1997 Arts for the Parks competition’s Grand Teton Natural History Award. Even in conventionally posed portrait commissions, Nelson produced an image that feels vibrant with down-to-earth humanity.

Reflecting on what he describes as his "multi-pronged career" as illustrator, teacher, and painter of a wide range of subjects, Nelson, now 56, shrugs, "I may just be one of those freaks who enjoy that kind of diversity." In actuality, his wide-ranging interests contribute to a freshness of outlook that illuminates his works. "It’s a constant growing process for me," he observes. "I’m always more concerned about the next painting I’m doing than the one I just finished."


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