1980 "Cold Blue" Winter Landscape Numbered Lithograph by Nanci Blair Closson

Description

"Cold Blue" unframed limited edition lithograph on BFK Rives paper by Nanci Blair Closson. Hand signed, titled and numbered by … more "Cold Blue" unframed limited edition lithograph on BFK Rives paper by Nanci Blair Closson. Hand signed, titled and numbered by the artist in pencil. Size: 29-1/2" x 39-3/4". Edition Number: 15/100. Circa 1980. Condition is Mint. 100 percent guarantee of authenticity. Certificate of Authenticity with appraisal is included. Make an offer!

BIO:
Nanci Blair Closson has a constant need for challenge and experimentation. As a result, she is always searching for new means of expressing herself through her art. Although she is best-known as an abstract watercolorist, Closson states that she has "a strong urge to break away from the two-dimensional, with a combination of materials--wood, clay, papers, material--and go beyond the illusion of three dimensions on a flat surface." She is now somewhere in between, she says, with constructions that are often raised and layered.

Called "layered watercolors," Closson's works make use of rag mattboard and torn papers to create landscapes. She first paints the various pieces, then shapes them, and finally applies them--using collage techniques--to form patterned three-dimensional works that, she describes, have a firm symbolic and subconsciously controlled structure. "What I have experienced in nature is a broad source from which I draw, but surprisingly, what I put down visually does symbolize and parallel abstractly my inner self, the spiritual part of me."

Born in Durham, North Carolina, Closson grew up on a farm in Indiana. Because hers was a fairly isolated childhood, Closson used her imagination to occupy her time, gathering anything she could find--burlap feedsacks, chicken feathers, stones, and tomato stakes--as artist's tools. "I arranged, rearranged, created, and recreated various environments in the chicken coop, the cornshed, barn, and hay loft," she recalls. When playing Tarzan, she colored on sheets to simulate leopard and tiger skins, draped them around herself and, armed with a whittled bean pole spear, wandered barefoot to the jungle woods.

Closson took her artistic inclinations to Purdue University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. Later, while living for thee years in Panama and the Canal Zone, where her husband was stationed with the U.S. Army, Closson found an immediate and receptive market for her work. "For two years," she says, "I sold everything I painted, had several one-woman shows, and won awards in juried exhibitions. Overnight, a full-time career was launched, and though circumstances would change from being 'a big fish in a little pond,' after returning to the States, I was hooked on art, having experienced the 'sweet smell of success."' less