About Amy Nelder
Born in 1971 in San Francisco, painter Amy Nelder calls her work “Pop Trompe L’oeil.” Employing high realism infused with pop au courant imagery, she celebrates otherwise unsung domestic moments or conveys a message of dramatic, sometimes contemporary socio-political, import – but with a sense of lightness and often facetious. She paints beautiful imagery, but there is always a story to her painting. She seeks to convey the subtle but meaningful layers of simple human interaction, to impart appreciation of the joys, and ironies, of our lives. Nelder’s more recent still lifes have expanded into global commentary, including her Covid19Art, Bunnies and Guns and Build-Your-Own Edenseries on psychic autonomy. The message is important, but she is simultaneously concerned with precision of technique, accuracy of detail and excellence of craftsmanship. Nelder studied at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Early in her career, she was the Forensic Artist for the San Francisco Police Department, working primarily with survivors of violent crimes as well as creating facial reconstructions of decomposed or skeletonized remains for the Medical Examiner’s Office. Nelder now focuses entirely on her own fine art. Nelder’s work has been shown in the de Young Museum, San Francisco, California. Timothy Anglin-Burgard, Distinguished Senior Curator and Curator-in-Charge of American Art for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, refers to Nelder’s “wonderful tension” in her featured work “Apples & Honey, 2020” at the 2020 “The de Young Open” exhibition. She has also exhibited in Conserving the Magic of our Planet at the Walt Disney Museum, San Francisco and The Garzoni Challenge: 90 works by Baroque artist Giovanna Garzoni and her contemporaries; an exhibition executed in partnership between the Uffizi Galleries, Florence, Italy, Advancing Women Artists and the Medici Archive Project. Gallery shows include the Chloe Gallery, San Francisco and Blue Line Arts, Roseville, California. The media are paying attention. Nelder’s work has enjoyed film coverage in “De Young Open: Curatorial walk through with exhibition curator Timothy A. Burgard” and written press and interviews in the San Francisco Chronicle, including a feature in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine: Entertainment: “Catching Up with Amy Nelder: From Police Sketch Artist to Fine Art;” San Francisco Examiner; KPIX “Evening Magazine;” CNN; Fox News; MSNBC; and Art Business News. Her work is in numerous national and international collections spanning the globe, held by, among others, Levi Strauss, Branding Archives, San Francisco, California; Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, California; Zurich Insurance, New York, New York; The Women's Art Library Special Collections and Archives/The Library Goldsmiths, University of London New Cross, London; Sports Engineering and Recreation Asia, LTD, Bangkok, Thailand; and Thin Man Investment Holdings (Pty) Ltd, South Africa. Her commissioned murals hang in the San Francisco Board of Education/Executive Administration Building, State of California Family Support Bureau, San Francisco District Attorney’s Services Center and the Chinese Charity Cultural Services Center. | 
