Gallery Zoe - The Works of Zoe Nadel

Galleries

• Contemporary
• Figurative
• Paint-Poops

About The Artist

Zoe Nadel paints and works in her home studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Born and raised in Woodbridge, New Jersey she and her husband Alan have spent most of their adult life working and playing in the American South; first in Durham, North Carolina then settling permanently in Memphis, Tennessee.

Zoe began her art career in a friend's garage where she opened a tube of watercolor paint and her life changed forever. She took her 3-year experience with the North Carolina council of the arts with her when the family moved to Germantown, Tennessee. Finding no art community available Zoe, although a newcomer, quickly met people equally passionate about art and who shared her desire for an art league. Within a year she had founded the Germantown Art Association, which later morphed into The Germantown/Memphis Art League, now 24 years later, with a national show and huge membership.

The literal world for her is just a reference point, using it to observe light, shape and color. In her early career as a watercolorist she quickly became an artist member of both state and national watercolor societies, with many awards to her credit. But a need to push a surface more than watercolor would allow found her moving into acrylics and then oils.

The move to acrylics and oils allowed Zoe to work more intuitively, purging the subconscious for imagery and, allowing it to speak to her, releasing a oeuvre of images of her "secret rooms". She found herself now able to take 1,000 items of experience and turn them into shapes molded from observation and redefined by the inner eye. Her painting process has a sense of channeling, or of "being in a state of lucid dreaming". Her work quickly caught the eye of local galleries where she had a successful career with many corporate and private purchases and most recently a Museum juried show acceptance. She has also served as a judge for local and state adult and children's art shows, taught art and spent 5 years as a volunteer artist for Theatre Memphis.

Holding both undergraduate and graduate degrees in English from the University of Pittsburgh, Zoe has also written but not published a book called, "My Garden Began with Art." To read an article about her winter garden enter: www.midsouthgardens.com/archives. Scroll down to February 2007 and open, "Wonders of a Winter Garden".

Today, Zoe works exclusively through her studio, her website and a rented show space in Memphis. When not in her studio she can be found on the golf course,in her garden,or folk dancing,the other great passions in her life.

Artist's Statement

I either take three steps down from my dressing room, or six steps up from the garage workroom. That's all it takes to transfer from my life as wife, dancer, golfer to being an artist. This is my studio. One side for oil painting the other for Acrylic, mixed media and in between tables for varnishing, framing, packaging and tagging. It all gets done in a space of 30 square feet. No committees to help make decisions. Only 4 cats, one of who is always asleep on my "thinking it over chair". Do I dare move them? Any cat owner would know the answer, only at risk of being swatted and clawed.

In this space, time doesn't exist and one and one is never two, sunlight streams in and shadows dance and talk and imagination rules. It's a place where I get inside the world of the painting and no matter what I do it never gets upset at me. I may get cross or shout at it, but it never shouts back. This creative space continually teaches me that the more I get out of my own way,the more comes through, revealing my inner rhythms and process of shape making. This is my place to make art.

Testimonials

Zoe's pieces are truly lovely, replete with all the spontaneity a surface can bear, with the promise of delicate worlds within worlds, beautifully colored, innocent and quirky. She withdraws to childlike simplicity, dredging the subconscious for imagery. One views these pieces with their intriguing surfaces and evocative shapes as nearly perfect.
-Frederick Koeppel, art reviewer, "The Commercial Appeal"

Zoe Nadel's art invites one to exchange emotion and intellect with the artist at a soul-to-soul level. The power of line, angle, depth and breadth of color continue to reveal as one is drawn in to study a piece. Her paintings are a joy and privilege to own.
-Kathy Thomas, antique dealer and owner

Zoe Nadel's work exemplifies energy, and purity of light and color. Whether portraying the essence of a relationship or the whimsy of an imaginary muse her use of color, shape and contrast interact to engage the viewer's imagination.
-Helen Argo, artist

I have been fortunate enough to use many of Zoe Nadel's paintings in interiors in which I have worked. Their color and vibrancy always cause an immediate and positive response from the viewer. But on closer examination the viewer realizes the depth and stories, which are interwoven. There is much to learn and the response is always deeper than just a casual viewing.
-Vance Anderson, Allied ASID

Peace to me is closing my eyes outdoors and hearing the birds around me sing. That is what drew me to a painting by Zoe Nadel called, "Song Birds". I thought I had bought it for my new office storing it at home while moving. I came home one day and found that my wife had hung it in our entranceway. The day I grabbed it to take to the new office my wife said, "No, you're not! It's staying here." Peace to me is also making my wife happy.
-Blake Billups, D.D.S.

Contact

Zoe Nadel
Memphis, TN
zoe@galleryzoe.com