Artist Statement

I paint and manipulate industrial metal screen into semi-transparent sculptures. Painted layers and forms create varied densities setting off relationships between visibility and concealment, interior and exterior.  My pieces are further activated by a viewer’s movement around them. Each sculpture is best understood as a composite of various perspectives. As one walks around each piece or the lighting shifts, transparent layers of screen function as an active participant in the dynamic exchange of shadow, color and composition. Overlapped colors blend, hidden passageways are revealed, and currents of moiré shimmer across the faceted layers.

Drawing from my background in dance, I’m inspired to create sculptures that are not only visually compelling, but also encapsulate this fluidity of movement within an otherwise static industrial medium. I draw inspiration from the Martha Graham School of Dance where inhalation and release of breath are the wellsprings of all movement. I translate this into my work where I manipulate the materials to expand and contract, evoking forms that appear suspended between states of inhaling and exhaling or the gesture of folding and unfurling.  With each new encounter, my work offers shifting perceptions that illuminate both the dimensionality and ephemerality of light and color, motion and emotion.

 

Biography

Nancy Ivanhoe is an artist based in Los Angeles with a studio in Inglewood. Influenced by the California Light and Space Art Movement of the 60s/70s and a degree in dance, she paints and sculpts industrial metal screen into sheer forms that explore the interplay of transparent color and form. Each angle of her work invites active engagement as configurations transition in color, moiré and shadow. Her work has been shown in international and national group exhibitions, and is included in the White Columns Gallery Registry. Commissioned works are in private and corporate collections.

Ivanhoe received an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute (2013) and the Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award (2012). Her work was published in New American Paintings, No. 111, MFA Annual (2014). Sculptures have been featured on the cover of the 12th Annual Drawing Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing (2021) and the introduction of FOA Friend of the Artist, Volume 14 (2022). Last summer she had a solo show at Launch LA Gallery and showed work at Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles. She has an upcoming show this March at King Gallery in Venice, CA.