A. Dale Nally: Beyond the Surface

By Raisa Clavijo

The oeuvre of A. Dale Nally leads the viewer on an internal voyage, urging him to rediscover the fascinating universe of his own senses and experience the emotions and ideas associated with specific textures, lights and tones. It is a voyage that manages to transcend the merely sensorial to delve into more profound territory pointing toward self-discovery and personal growth.

His childhood on a farm in Appalachian Kentucky trained his sensitivity in a very special way, causing him to identify with nature and appreciate his surroundings. “Although I have resided in large cities for many years now, my natural tendency is to still view my surrounding in the terms of the world of my childhood,” he says. This ability to observe reality, deconstruct it and extract its essence is what defines his work. His work and his life are interwoven; they have grown and changed, as he has evolved emotionally. “My work reflects my development as a person as much as my development as an artist; it is all the same,” he acknowledged in an interview.

Painter A. Dale Nally working at his studio.

Nally graduated in fine arts in the early 1980s with a specialty in theater design. He later traveled to Japan to study under the tutelage of the master Tatsuo Yamauchi. Contact with the East, his numerous trips throughout Asia and his work with Japanese artists influenced his way of perceiving the world. The Eastern philosophy and lifestyle reconciled with that singular empathy with nature that had characterized him since childhood. The sum of these teachings led him to finding the essence of things in order to transmit transcendental ideas, drawing on a frugality of resources.

A. Dale Nally, Black and White Square, oil on canvas, 68” x 68”

He realized then that a simple brushstroke, applied in the right place in a well thought compositional structure, can become profoundly expressive. It can move deeply. It can establish a much more meaningful relationship with the viewer than many works overloaded with elements and messages that often compete amongst themselves in a cacophony that repels and disturbs. His creative process is guided by intuition and spontaneity. “While I consider myself a completely American painter, my own spiritual growth and visual sense have led me to an almost ‘Zen’ approach to the creative process,” he says.

A. Dale Nally, Safe Passage # 45, oil on canvas, 62” x 50”

Furthermore, his experience in theater led him to understand that he will always work for a spectator with whom he must establish communication at a sensorial level. He sees that he does not create just for himself; rather, the piece is only complete when it is viewed by the public. He also owes to theater his ability to provoke emotions through the creation of surfaces that are dramatic and expressive in their own simplicity, surfaces that appear to throb under layers and layers of pictorial material.

The surfaces of his mostly large-format canvases filter subtly penetrating light, revealing those traces that witnessed the process of creation. He favors oils to create these effects that look like transparencies, achieved with tens of very fine, translucent layers of pigment to which he occasionally adds sand, tar and marble powder, among other materials, to create textures that invite touching, that appear to be alive. Each piece is the result of an arduous work process, one that appears to be a metaphor for life in the sense that each layer refers to a veil of life experiences, reversals and triumphs, tens of veils that little by little inure our character, making us wiser, stronger and more human.

Untitled # 57, oil on canvas, 74” x 64”

His work displays an inheritance from Informalism and action painting, but above all from artists such as Antoni Tàpies and Robert Ryman, whom Nally acknowledges as important influences and who taught him how an artist can allow himself to be guided spontaneously by the interaction between the material and pictorial surface, allowing that synergy to lead him in the creative act and be seduced by accident and chance.

It is interesting how his work bears a very special relationship with the past. Many of his paintings are reminiscent of the surface of walls found in any city in the world, which have gathered bearing traces left by time. The past is encapsulated in these vestiges and the surface then presents itself as a receptacle for memory, a memory at times translated into symbols, into traces that only the artist can decipher completely. They are most likely closely tied to transcendental moments in his life and to a very intimate symbolism that may appear cryptic before the eyes of an intruder, but in turn they contain a universal language with which almost all human beings can identify even if only at a subconscious level.

In his recent works, Dale Nally has evolved toward a structured minimalism and an even more marked frugality of expressive resources. In a conversation in his studio, he revealed that this change was due to his emotional maturing. As he has evolved spiritually, he has been eliminating details from his works that he now considers superfluous. His palette has become much more austere. The brilliant reds and contrasts in color that characterized his paintings three years ago have now turned into a major utilization of the gamut of ochre and earth tones, and also white, gray and black. At times, vestiges of much more brilliant tones appear to subtly emerge from these surfaces.

Surface # 9, oil on canvas, 30” x 60”

Nally’s oeuvre forms parts of numerous private and corporate collections throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Hong Kong. His new studio, an old warehouse located in Miami’s Wynwood Art District, functions as a creative laboratory where the artist lives and works, and which is always open to receive collectors, art professionals and the general public. In the last three years he has preferred to somewhat distance himself from the maelstrom of preparing exhibitions for galleries and museums, concentrating instead on his personal evolution and the development of his work. This change is notable in his recent works, which display great solidity both conceptual and formal. Nally today reveals himself to us as a more mature artist, whose work has transcended the mere material state of the canvas to delve into a profound analysis of the human condition.

A. Dale Nally’s new studio is located at 415 NW 26^th Street, Miami, 33127 / Phone: 305 724 6021 / www.adalenally.com / dalenally@adalenally.com