Nellie King Solomon

Nellie King Solomon (born 1971) is an American contemporary painter known for her large-scale abstract gestural paintings on Mylar. Her work explores ideas of space, environment, control, loss of control, materials, and movement. Some critics have described her works as "beautiful pictures of terrible things."
Solomon creates her abstract works by pouring and pushing paint, inks, and other materials, sometimes toxic, such as asphalt and soda ash, over translucent Mylar using custom tools.
Solomon's art practice incorporates elements of several different art movements, including the Light and Space movement, Finish Fetish movement, and color field painting.
Nellie King Solomon was born in 1971 in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, California to architect Daniel Solomon and artist and designer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, creator of Supergraphics. Her family has roots in the California creative community. In an interview with The Project for Women, Solomon stated, "I come from a family of designers, authors, TV writers, hat makers, pianists and shrinks. In short, generations of Californian creative professionals who made their livings off their wits and taste."
Solomon struggled in French school and was later diagnosed with dyslexic. In her youth, Solomon trained in ballet for years, but stopped due to foot issues.
For high school, Solomon attended the Urban School in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. While in school, Solomon initially wanted to become an architect, like her father, and worked on an architectural restoration project in Venice, Italy.. During her high school years, Solomon also worked as an artist assistant to David Ireland.
For undergraduate studies, Solomon was accepted into Cooper Union’s School of Architecture in New York City. After leaving Cooper Union, Solomon took a gap year, studying and traveling. She studied and worked in sustainable development and agriculture in Santa Cruz.. She lived in New York, Paris, and Barcelona before returning to California to study art.
Upon her return to California, Solomon completed a BA in Art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received her Masters in Fine Art at the California College of the Arts. Solomon has worked as a professor of art at Stanford University and California College of the Arts.
In 2001, shortly after graduating, Solomon had her first solo show, which received critical praise. Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle described it as a "powerful debut that will be hard to follow."
Since her first solo exhibition, Solomon's work has evolved. It is said to encompass both the micro and macro, sometimes in complete abstraction and at other times incorporating narrative visuals. In a review, David M. Roth wrote, "it’s impossible to say whether you’re seeing a magnified view of a molecular reaction or a vision of the Earth's crust from outer space," relating her work to the photographs of Edward Burtynsky and David Maisel.
Critics have situated Solomon's work within the canon of abstract painting. Roth notes elements of "the free-form splatter of Jackson Pollock, the staining of Helen Frankenthaler, the gravity-based dripping of Pat Steir, the hybrid smearing techniques invented by Ed Moses and the gritty surfaces of early Sam Francis."
Kenneth Baker agrees, placing her work alongside the paintings of Sam Francis, Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler, adding that Solomon's narrow strip series "recall the marks left by melting ice in Andy Goldsworthy's icicle drawings."
Although Solomon's work shares elements with modernist abstract painters, it also challenges them. A catalog for an exhibition with Ochi Projects describes her work as "engaging with the history of painting in a challenging and combative style." Solomon has said, "because I grew up in architecture ...that sort of high modernism [is something] I both play off of and rebel against." She has also stated, "My work is like reaching into a dark velvet bag and pulling out everything you’re not suppose to talk about."
Solomon's work has been featured in the Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Hyperallergic, Wallpaper, Harvard Review, Zyzzyva, Art in America, San Francisco Examiner, Art Practical, ArtBlitzLA, NYTheatre, and Architectural Digest, among other publications.
In 2019, Solomon moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
In 2024, Solomon held a survey show in San Francisco of works created between 1999 and 2024. Critic David M. Roth writes that the show combined elements of influence including race car driving (taught to her by her father), her early experimentation in materials, the works of her mother, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, and responses to moving to and living in Los Angeles.
Solomon paints on Mylar, a material used in architectural drawing that relates to her architectural training. She credits her architectural background to her "truth in materials" approach, using custom-made glass and dowel tools to stamp or spread pigments across her Mylar surfaces.
Solomon attributes the physical process of painting large-scale works to her surfing practice and ballet training, stating, "My growing up as a ballet dancer very much affects the way I hop around spaces and crawl over my table and push and pull the paint. I’m very physical with it,"
Her paintings often incorporate bold colors, which art critic Kenneth Baker believes "yield[s] something that eludes most painters working in this vein: the sense of color displaying itself."
Although her work incorporates elements of the Light and Space movement, Finish Fetish Movement, and Color field Painting, it does not fit comfortably into any single movement.
Nellie King Solomon collaborates with her mother, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, often acting as installation facilitator, creator, and career manager. The two have had numerous exhibitions together, share influences, but maintain distinct approaches to art making.
Both were trained in architecture, although neither were ever licensed. They both create rules and grids and then challenge them. They both utilize Cartesian coordinates, but for different purposes.
Although both artists share influences, Nellie King Solomon often diverges from her mother's hard-edged Swiss graphic design and modernist.
In a review by Pacific Sun Newspaper for their show SUPER-SILLY-US, writer Owen explains, "Solomon’s work is abstract and irreverent, and has a kind of relationship to movement and the body. Bobbie’s work is really informed by her meticulous training in Swiss graphic design with set rules behind it. That said, they were both trained as architects, and it’s interesting to see how each of them has taken that interest and translated it in very different ways through visual art."
Solomon has had exhibitions at:
Group exhibitions have featured her work at:
Solomon has been nominated for the SECA award multiple times. The SECA Art Award recognizes Bay Area artists whose work has not yet received substantial recognition from a major institution.