Nellie King Solomon on SHOUTOUT LA

Bendix’s Nellie King Solomon was interview by Shoutout LA, excerpt below, read the full article on shoutoutla.com

Hi Nellie, what do you want people to remember about you?
I want to be known for having made brilliant paintings. Paintings with depth, beauty, and impact that hits you in your chest the moment you walk in a room. I want to be known for having lived a happy, if not a little renegade path, forging my way raising my kid on my own, striking a balance living joyfully while making work at a top level. I want my legacy to help finally eradicate that bygone era of the toxic male dysfunctional self-destructive misery breading the “best artist”. I’d like my life and work to elevate young women artists who are told they have to choose between having a kid or making great work. Do both.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m most excited about “Mercurochrome-Oppenheimer’s Garden” a series I’m in the middle of in my studio at the Bendix Building. The work is about to be blown up huge on vinyl 60 feet long and 10 feet high at 751 Fairfax at Melrose, LA. This work summons a Baroque hidden garden I grew up running in on the Pacific Ocean Stinson Beach, that once belonged to Haakon & Barbara Chevalier, the Communist best friends of Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer would return to this garden to think about what he had done. Often, I’d fall in this garden and skin my knee. My father put Mercurochrome a fluorescent orange-pink antiseptic on my cuts.
I paint toxic beauty in the exploded field.
Making the invisible visible.
Ornament is crime, I’m criminal.

It’s my responsibility to get through all the to-do lists in life to make space and quiet time in the studio, focus my energy and go beyond, to make a painting of all it. At my best, when I’m in the zone, I don’t feel it’s me who is making these things. Humbly, I feel it’s my job to channel what I’m meant to make.