Nancy Riedell’s creative journey began long before her formal art education at San Francisco State University, where she studied Fine Arts with a focus on figure drawing, color values, acrylics, oils, and art history. Her artistic roots stretch back to childhood, nurtured by a mother who recognized her daughter’s early passion for drawing and painting. With a steady supply of art books and materials, Nancy developed her technical skills and cultivated an eye for color, form, and balance elements that now define her distinctive watercolor works.
Originally from California, Nancy has recently settled in Ely, Nevada, where she continues to explore new landscapes and inspiration. Her artistic path is one of continual evolution, anchored by tradition but always open to experimentation and new techniques. Over the years, she has exhibited on both coasts of the United States, won nine awards, and been featured in four publications.
The Language of Watercolor
Watercolor is Nancy Riedell’s chosen medium, a discipline known for its delicacy and unpredictability. Yet in her hands, watercolor becomes bold, vibrant, and full of energy. Her paintings are characterized by strong, saturated color and evocative themes that reflect both her passion and her mastery of control within chaos.
Unlike many who approach watercolor with caution, Nancy embraces its fluidity. She allows pigment and water to dance across the surface, blending in unexpected ways that bring life to her compositions. Her use of color is confident and deliberate, creating visual harmonies that evoke emotion and memory. Whether depicting landscapes, abstracts, or floral scenes, her brushwork captures the essence of fleeting beauty moments that shimmer with intensity before fading softly, much like watercolor itself.
A Traveler’s Eye
Nancy’s creative process is deeply connected to her love of travel and exploration. With a camera always close at hand, she photographs scenes and textures that later become references for her paintings. Her subjects are as diverse as the places she’s visited: breathtaking sunrises over Monterey County, the whimsical beaches of Santa Cruz, the eclectic neighborhoods of Portland, Oregon, and the striking rock formations of New Mexico and Nevada.
Each photograph becomes a fragment of visual memory, a spark that ignites her imagination once back in the studio. Through her watercolors, these captured moments transform into emotional landscapes, rich with color and atmosphere. From covered bridges in Pennsylvania to abstract studies of light and form, Nancy’s portfolio reveals both her technical range and her boundless curiosity about the world around her.
Experimentation and Evolution
One of Nancy’s most intriguing recent works, Melting, exemplifies her spirit of experimentation. Created as a sample piece to test the properties of watercolor ground, a thick, viscous medium that allows artists to paint watercolor over an absorbent, textured surface. Melting blurs the boundary between control and surrender.
The piece embraces the unpredictable behavior of the medium, with cascading drips and layered washes that evoke the passage of time and transformation. It’s an abstract meditation on impermanence, how forms dissolve, how beauty shifts, and how creation and decay coexist.
A curator from Belgium described Melting as part of a curation that “encompasses the beauty of falling apart: ice melting, cream dripping, or paint cascading in unruly streams.” The curator’s reflection captures the emotional resonance at the core of Nancy’s work, a reminder that nothing lasts forever, and, sometimes, that’s the point.
In Melting, Nancy translates this philosophy into visual poetry. The painting is not just an experiment with materials but a contemplation of fragility, balance, and change, universal themes rendered through pigment, texture, and water.
The Power of Color and Emotion
Across Nancy Riedell’s body of work, color serves as both language and emotion. Her palette shifts effortlessly between serenity and intensity, sometimes soft and luminous, other times rich and bold. Each hue carries its own emotional weight, creating atmospheres that invite the viewer to linger, to feel, to interpret.
Her landscapes often oscillate between realism and abstraction, allowing imagination to fill in the spaces between lines and shapes. The effect is both grounding and transcendent: a bridge between the tangible and the dreamlike. In this way, her art invites viewers to see the world anew, to notice the details, the colors, and the fleeting beauty of moments often overlooked.
Recognition and Influence
Nancy Riedell’s work has been widely exhibited and celebrated, earning her numerous awards and recognition in national publications. Her growing body of work continues to inspire both artists and collectors who are drawn to her fearless use of color and her willingness to experiment within the delicate framework of watercolor.
Her artistic voice resonates internationally not just because of her technical mastery, but because of her authenticity. Each brushstroke feels personal an honest expression of how she perceives and connects with the world around her.
Conclusion: The Art of Letting Go
In the art of watercolor, as in life, control and surrender exist in delicate balance. Nancy Riedell understands this truth intimately. Her paintings embody a sense of freedom and flow, reminding us that beauty often emerges from impermanence and transformation.
From her early days as a young artist inspired by her mother’s encouragement to her current explorations in abstract form and texture, Nancy’s artistic evolution mirrors the very process of watercolor itself, fluid, unpredictable, and endlessly expressive.
Through her work, Nancy Riedell invites us to see beyond the surface to embrace the beauty of melting moments, the playfulness of change, and the quiet power of color as it speaks to the soul.
