Amy Nelder

Born in 1971 in San Francisco, painter Amy Nelder calls her work “Pop Trompe L’oeil.” Employing high realism infused with pop au courant imagery, she celebrates otherwise unsung domestic moments or conveys a message of dramatic, sometimes contemporary socio-political, import – but with a sense of lightness and often facetious. She paints beautiful imagery, but there is always a story to her painting. She seeks to convey the subtle but meaningful layers of simple human interaction, to impart appreciation of the joys, and ironies, of our lives. Nelder’s more recent still lifes have expanded into global commentary, including her Covid19Art, Bunnies and Guns, and Build-Your-Own Eden series on psychic autonomy.

The message is important, but she is simultaneously concerned with precision of technique, accuracy of detail, and excellence of craftsmanship. Nelder studied at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Early in her career, she was the Forensic Artist for the San Francisco Police Department, working primarily with survivors of violent crimes as well as creating facial reconstructions of decomposed or skeletonized remains for the Medical Examiner’s Office. 

Nelder now focuses entirely on her own fine art. A trained opera singer from ages 9 – 20, she notes the musicality in her paintings, that her way of feeling color is rhythmic and lyrical. She experiences a painting as a symphonic composition.

Upcoming exhibitions include Expressions West at the Coos Art Museum, Bend, Oregon; National Exhibition, Haggin Museum, San Joaquin, California; Women in Art: GREAT Artists who just Happen to be Women at Chloe Gallery, San Francisco; and ArtMarket San Francisco 2022. Nelder is an invited panelist for Gen-erate at SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work is now streaming on “Amy Nelder Artist Channel” on LOUPE (globally on AppleTV, Amazon Fire, Pluto TV, Xumo, Samsung, Comcast and Xfinity).