Dona Nelson: Stand Alone Paintings presents artworks from the last four decades to demonstrate the breadth and continuity of Nelson’s influential painting career. Originally from Grand Island, Nebraska, Nelson received her B.F.A. from Ohio State University in 1968.

While still an undergraduate at Ohio State, Nelson moved to New York City to participate in the newly-formed Whitney Independent Study Program in the fall of 1967. In the following decades, she played a prominent role in shaping the direction of abstract painting in New York, forging an independent vocabulary and style that melds painting with sculpture, representation with abstraction, and oils and acrylics with nontraditional materials such as cheesecloth and modeling paste.

The exhibition brings together a group of Nelson’s gestural and large-scale canvases from both public and private collections to form a vibrant and immersive installation. Nelson’s paintings have been featured in solo exhibitions at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; MoMA PS1; Cheim and Read, Michael Klein Gallery, Scott Hanson Gallery, and Hamilton Gallery. Her work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions presented at New York University; Whitney Museum of American Art; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; Nassau County Museum of Art; Mary Boone Gallery, and Marlborough Gallery. Nelson is a Professor of Painting and Drawing at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, where she has taught since 1991.