SANTA FE, NM.- Peters Projects, Santa Fe is presenting Kenton Nelson’s, Taming Nature. The exhibition is on view at Peters Projects from December 15 through February 10.

Taming Nature is a curated exhibition featuring a collection of past and recently completed paintings which have in common a subtle voyeuristic undertone. Philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling wrote, “To achieve great things we must be self-confined…mastery is revealed in limitation.” Nelson’s paintings “Simple Manners” and “Taming Nature” (seen here) capture Schelling’s message by offering the viewer limited glimpses into private moments. Moreover, the paintings are frozen in time, a dialectic notion of nature where opposites converge and intimate moments become public. What is first thought of as implicit within the paintings becomes explicit, either through the title of the work or the viewer’s intuition.

Kenton Nelson was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He attended Long Beach State University and Otis Parsons Art Institute, and for the last 35 years has had his art studio in Pasadena, California. He has been on the faculty of the Otis Parsons Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Academy of Art in San Francisco.

After seeing an exhibition in Soho, NY, The New Yorker Magazine asked to use some of Nelson’s paintings for their covers. Thousands of readers of the magazine recognized the talent and immediately Nelson’s already successful career launched even further.

Nelson traces his interest in painting back to his great uncle, Roberto Montenegro, renowned Mexican muralist and Modernist. The style of Nelson’s paintings has their origins in American Scene painting, Regionalism, and Works Progress Administration artists of the 1930s.