Midwinter: Freyja and the Northwind

Chad Nelson is a printmaker mostly creating relief prints and mezzotints.  Both technical languages have clearly been chosen for their specific ability to render the brooding mood which is pervasive in his creation.  While the Norse Mythology which inspires Nelson for many of his compositions tends towards a darker atmosphere, this aspect of his prints is somehow not morbid.  The end of the day, overcast skies, or the night, are all strong actors of his narrative.  But they seem to translate a time of self-reflection, of future and past dreams, of ancestry as it links us to our own history.  Nelson is technically exacting.  He burnishes his rocked mezzotint plates with a precise sense of grayscale and contrast.  And his relief print matrixes are carved meticulously, laying line next to line with precision, which renders finely tuned and evocative dreamscapes.