Hawaii has inspired the ideas while his professional training on the mainland has given him the tools, techniques and aesthetic options to create his works.
Certainly one of the most influential years in his career was spent studying at Yale with Josef Albers, the famous Bauhaus artist and colorist. While there he began to recognize the color relationships and phenomena that create the illusions of veils, transparencies, surface textures, light, and most especially the luminosity evident in his work. From this he developed a visual grammar that is the basis for his paintings. Visual qualities of the land, sea, and sky have given rise to abstraction in his work.
Joseph Albers work appeared on a US postage stamp with the quote “Learning Never Ends” Dick Nelson has made that statement his life’s work – sharing new discoveries in color with countless students for over 50 years.
