R. KENTON NELSON
	FOREWORD Born in 1954, Mr. Nelson was raised in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, with its distinctive architecture influencing much of his early work. He attended California State University in Long Beach and the Otis Parsons Art Institute, where he served on the faculty, as well as the Academy of Art in San Francisco. The artist traces his earliest interest in painting back to his great uncle, the Mexican Modernist and muralist, Roberto Montenegro. His childhood was filled with stories about Montenegro and his friends, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Mr. Nelson refers to his paintings as "narrative idealism" in which he strives to glorify the everyday and ordinary moments of life. Inspired by Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, he captures the heroism and promise of the WPA era. There is something uniquely American about the artist and his work which is never more apparent than when expressed in his own sentiments, "I'm just a regular Joe, trying to live up to our American history of painting, and in the long run hoping to earn a place in there somewhere with my voice and invention." In November of 2005, a retrospective exhibition of works by Mr. Nelson will be held at the Pasadena Museum of California Art where two new long-awaited books on his work will be premiered. Presented as a two volume set, the first, entitled Rhymes and Reason, with a foreword written by acclaimed novelist and collector Dean Koontz, contains works which Mr. Nelson based on children's nursery rhymes. Prose and Cons is the second volume, with a foreword written by Helen Tye Talkin, and is a collection of the artist's figurative works.
	TITLE  |  FOREWORD  |  BIOGRAPHY