Nancy Genn

“Nancy Genn's art is inspired broadly by three basic components that confront each of us daily. First is the natural world and specifically, the fundamental elements of the land, water, and light, including the interactions between them and their respective changes over time: daily, monthly, and seasonally. Genn has studied the interplay of light and surfaces as it relates to how we experience color in our lives. Such experiences could be from direct sunlight washing the landscape, or dancing on the rippled surfaces of water, or through cast shadows from architecture, or in Genn's case, through the many dream-like layers of fog in the Bay Area around San Francisco, California where she has lived and worked her entire life. The artist, from her vantage point, frequently visualizes the light from the sun and moon through the fog as planes of color, layered one in front of the other. Thus, she observed the light literally operating as thin translucent layers of color within framed structures from the urban architecture and bridges as noted below. From then on, Genn emulated those experiences in her various methods of applying layers of pigment on supports and creating her many compositions across numerous series of artworks.

“The second component and influence is calligraphy and the communication between one another in and between seemingly complex and diverse cultures. The artist has experienced such communications in her own life and through her vast international travels to Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. In Genn's work many different symbols, characters, and letters and permutations thereof, become incorporated into her artworks through different media and processes and used across her many series.

“The third component is architecture, both literally and metaphorically. A vital part of the artist's studio practice that began with replicating the layers and planes of fractured light as she viewed the landscape through the Bay Area fog. Then, followed by the introduction of angled and rectangular geometric forms around the interior perimeters of the canvas that created structural and framing devices, like portals for viewing the landscapes and seascapes far beyond the windows and porticos where she had such vast panoramic views and also around the urban architecture and bridges within her site lines. Beyond the physical structures from where Genn views the sea and landscapes is the integration of architecture with nature that impacts the human psyche and human condition more broadly.”

– From The Art of Nancy Genn by Katherine B. Crum, 1999