My husband, Pierre Delattre - writer and painter - has observed the evolution of my art for almost 30 years. I am grateful for his astute comments in the following essay of appreciation.
THE ART OF NANCY ORTENSTONE: AN APPRECIATION
Nancy Ortenstone’s art evokes the ambiguity between change and constancy, between natural forms—skies, oceans, landscapes—in their observed transformations, and the ageless, timeless white-light source from which they have emerged and to which they will return.
Just as we intuitively experience within ourselves the way that all colors in nature emerge from white, so while viewing the paintings of Nancy Ortenstone, we also experience the way that all colors observed in nature return to light. She calls the raw canvas openings in her paintings, “rips in the fabric of time.”
How best to describe this white-light stillness that underlies the flux and flow of color in her paintings? Collectors have often said that they never grow tired of her art. One couple called her painting “an inexhaustible experience.” Why is that?
Because, it seems to me, that her paintings are not fixed images in space or time; they belong to the ageless and the timeless; they evoke a process of continuous change. This mystical relationship between the source of all created beings and its most beautiful manifestations is at the heart of her work.
Read the full write-up here.
