Emerging Artists | Patricia Nebbeling

Alla prima delight

Patricia Nebbeling, Pink Peonies, oil, 12 x 16.

Patricia Nebbeling, Pink Peonies, oil, 12 x 16.

This story was featured in the February 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art February 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

BRIGHT, FRESH, and gestural, the blooms in Patricia Nebbeling’s floral still lifes display a variety of engaging traits that are easy to anthropomorphize. Some petals appear to nod sociably to viewers while others bashfully hide from the public eye, and still others seem to graciously bow over the vases from which they sprout. It’s undoubtedly the emotive touch of the New Jersey artist, whose affection for flowers tends to supersede her interests in landscape and portrait painting. “I always end up with a much larger proportion of florals in my work,” says Nebbeling. “Flowers are so complicated, so it’s a challenge to paint something that doesn’t look overworked.”

The artist’s influences include historic greats like French floral painter Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), although Nebbeling herself opts for a more informal and painterly presentation of her flowers. Painting wet into wet, she completes most of her pieces in just one or two spirited sessions. “I paint almost every day, and it’s been that way ever since I started painting,” she says. “It’s been a joy I could never have imagined.”

Patricia Nebbeling, The Blue Vase, oil, 16 x 20.

Patricia Nebbeling, The Blue Vase, oil, 16 x 20.

Located just around the corner from the artist’s home studio in northern New Jersey is the Ridgewood Art Institute, where the former chemical engineer learned to paint a little over a decade ago. Nebbeling, who teaches traditional oil painting there today, vividly recalls her earliest lessons at the school with artists John P. Osborne and Danielle Wexler. “Even in a still life, there is atmosphere,” she says, summing up their teachings. “You have to have it in everything you paint. It’s the air around you and the light and the space you’re painting in.”

Over the years, Nebbeling has perfected that lesson both en plein air and in her studio. Today the Signature member of Oil Painters of America exhibits her work at numerous OPA shows and with other prestigious groups like the American Impressionist Society and the Salmagundi Club. While she credits the Ridgewood Art Institute with being one of the best places to learn foundational principles in fine art, she has enjoyed veering away from the school’s more formal style. “I’m on the more impressionistic side of traditional realism. But,” adds Nebbeling, “I’ve always recognized how important it is to incorporate those principles in your artwork. You start with the fundamentals, and then you can be more experimental and find your own voice.” —Kim Agricola

representation
Handwright Gallery & Framing, New Canaan, CT; Salmagundi Club, New York, NY; Ridgewood Art Institute, Ridgewood, NJ.

This story was featured in the February 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art February 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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