STATEMENT

My work focuses on the architecture of natural and built environments. In some paintings I collage forms to fuse disparate places, while in others I more objectively track the changes of time and climate change through direct oil paintings. My references meld surreal natural landforms of the American Southwest with the limestone escarpments, old growth forests, and post-industrial landscapes in upstate New York. Canyons, arches, hoodoos, cliffs, and ancient woodlands continue to be shaped by erosion by wind, water, and human intervention. 

While my work is rooted in representational oil painting, my larger canvases also engage resources from the places I paint. I make plein air paintings and collect soils, quarry dust, and plant matter at each site to make inks that become the first layer of larger canvases. These initial ink pours create the ground. I then build the surface with oil paint, allowing forms to emerge from the same materials that shaped the landscape itself.

BIO

Laini Nemett holds an MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA from Brown University in Visual Arts and History of Art & Architecture. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Queens Council on the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Awesome Foundation New York, and the Fulbright Program. She has participated in residencies at Yaddo, the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Hambidge Center, Ucross Foundation, Jentel Center for Creative arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Cill Rialaig Arts Center in Ballinskelligs, Ireland, and the Alfred & Trafford Klots International Residency in Léhon, France.

Nemett’s work has been exhibited nationally and abroad, including recent solo exhibitions at the Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg, CA; the Mandeville Gallery in Schenectady, NY; the Guilin Art Museum in China, and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Platform Gallery in Baltimore, MD. Selected group exhibitions include Bernay Fine Art, MA; Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, NY; Albany International Airport Gallery; Kenise Barnes Fine Art, NY; Blue Mountain Gallery, NY; Collar Works, NY; Adelphi University, NY; National YoungArts Foundation, FL; Palazzo dei Cartelloni, Italy; Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, MO; Geoffrey Young Gallery, MA; VisArts Gallery, MD; Platform Gallery, MD; The Granoff Art Center at Brown University, RI; Ethan Cohen, NY; Rymer Gallery, TN; Prince Street Gallery, NY; George Mason University, VA; and Casa das Artes Criação Ambiente Utopias in Africa. Nemett lives and works in Schenectady, New York, where she is Associate Professor of Drawing and Painting at Union College.