Nancy Bass: Statement
The farm animals in my paintings inhabit a world removed from the constant noise of contemporary life. From my home on a farm in Central Virginia, I engage deeply with my cows and the surrounding landscape. I strive to capture the personalities of my beloved animals exploring their relationship to the land through idyllic landscape settings or through abstract fields of color. My paintings reference not only the tradition of the Abstract Expressionists but also my favorite works of Renaissance art, conveying always and above all my love of animals and my passion for color, texture, and the beauteous harmony of nature.
Nancy Bass: Biography
Over the last decade, Nancy Bass has exhibited her work across the country, from Virginia to New Mexico, New York to Nebraska. Her paintings have been selected for inclusion in nearly three dozen juried exhibitions and have been singled out by critics and museums professions alike, including Peter Schjeldahl (Art Critic of The New Yorker), Carla Hanzal (Curator of Contemporary Art, Mint Museum of Art), Mark Richard Leach (Director of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art), and William Hennessey (Director of the Chrysler Museum of Art). She has been an artist in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, VA and has held recent solo exhibitions at the Lynchburg Fine Arts Center, VA (2009) and the Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art, NE (2010), the latter with accompanying catalogue. Since 2006, she has been a member of the McGuffey Arts Center cooperative, and is currently represented by Soho Myriad in Atlanta, GA, McJunkin Gallery in Charleston, WV, Gallery Piquel in New Hope PA, Studio Eleven in Lexington, VA, Berkley Gallery in Warrenton, VA, and the Nichols Gallery in Barboursville, VA.
Bass’s paintings are housed in numerous collections, among them the University of Virginia and Martha Jefferson Hospitals (Charlottesville, VA), the Capital One Corporation (Richmond, VA), and held by private collectors in cities across the country, including Dallas, Palm Springs, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Her paintings have featured in the juried publication Studio Visit and in the volumes such as How Did You Paint That? 100 Ways to Paint Landscapes and Virginia's Cattle Story:The First Four Centuries. Most recently Nancy Bass has been named a finalist in The Artist’s Magazine 29th annual art competition.
