Chad Nelson is this month’s Featured Artist. He was born in Modesto, CA and grew up in the foothills west of Yosemite National Park, in the small old west town of Coulterville. He loved to draw as a child, and though he showed promise all through high school and was encouraged to pursue his talent, went into computer aided drafting after graduation.
When a chance came to move to western Kentucky and pursue art full time, he took it. Chad would love to author and illustrate books for children and worked to learn the ins and outs of children’s book publishing and illustration through SVS Learn, an online establishment. His favorite living artists are: Skottie Young, Jake Parker, Larry McDougal, Goro Fujita, and Chris Riddell. Past favorites are: Maurice Sendack, Arthur Rackham, and W. Heath Robinson. His favorite Art Movement is the Golden Age of Illustration.
Water color, and pen and ink are his favorite mediums. His art is whimsical and warm, full of imagination and magic. He enjoys creating images that make people remember their imaginative inner child and that there may just still be magic out there in the world if only they looked. Chad is as unique and warm and fun as his art. He lives in a barn shaped shed that he and a friend turned into a ‘tiny house’. It’s near some woods on a friend’s farm in western Kentucky and he absolutely loves it (aside from the humidity) and painting and drawing there. Make sure you get a chance to go by PAPA Gallery and look at his show. Some of his pieces have sold already! So, don’t wait too long!
