Sometimes I wonder if--just maybe--everything that can be accomplished with landscape painting has already been done. And then I come across someone whose work surprises and astonishes me. That was the way I felt when I first saw Emily Nelligan’s charcoal studies of Cranberry Island, Maine. Transcendant and ethereal, her drawings are a remarkable tribute to a place.
Early in her artistic life, Nelligan switched from painting to working in charcoal because it was much less expensive. But she uses charcoal like a painter. Her subtle range of grays and painterly shadings create a beautifully atmospheric world of forest and shoreline, sea and sky. Her images are stripped of detail or human presence, and what remains is an almost abstract interplay of dark and light. Despite their small size (7” x 10”), these works seem to me to have an undeniable power and elemental quality that’s unique.
Nelligan was born in 1924 and studied at Coopers Union in the 1940s where she met her husband, art teacher and illustrator Marvin Bileck. They lived a quiet, modest life in Connecticut and spent their summers on Cranberry Island. I admire not only Nelligan’s drawings but also her steadfast dedication to rendering the beauty of particular place, despite the fact that she received little recognition for her work until she was in her late seventies.
More information and images can be found at https://www.alexandregallery.com/artists-work/emily-nelligan
