Phoenix New Times profiles 100 creative forces in  their annual The Best of Phoenix  issue. Number 51.,  John Randall Nelson, is a Phoenix-based painter who describes his most recent work as largely anthropological.

“The imagery comes from a free-play of impression and association,” he says. “I see it all as a sensible rendering of my insensible mind. It’s a form of visual speech. Painting is a language that’s more devious than words, more free to imply and allude, to strike out one way and then circle back another way.”

Nelson finished his MFA at ASU in 1996, and in the last 15 years, he’s produced commissions for the National Endowment for the Arts, The United States Postal Service, and the BIO5 / Institute for Bio-Research at the University of Arizona, to name a few. Currently his work is represented by Stremmel Gallery in Reno, Grover/Thurston Gallery in Seattle, and Gebert Gallery in LA, Scottsdale and Santa Fe. To read more by Clarie Lawton, Phoenix New Times, click here.

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