JoAnneh Nagler is an abstract painter living in San Francisco that primarily works in acrylic paintings.
‘The folk singer Odetta once said, “One day while you’re walking down life’s road you may reach a fork, and at that fork you’ll have to insist upon your own life and the creative human spirit that’s within you with all your might.”
Since my own fork in the road—since my decision to become a working artist—I’ve tried to listen as closely as possible to that “human spirit” and its illuminating voice. It wasn’t easy to commit to, and it has taken discipline to work my artistry every day: to show up, to do the work for the work’s sake, and to trust.
Any art form—poetry, dance, painting—is a continuing education: one never “graduates,” one only explores and discovers. After a while, after the immersion (as I like to call it), the exploration itself becomes the gift—or as Jimmy Page says in the recent documentary It Might Get Loud, “The spark becomes the point, then, doesn’t it?”
To paint in the abstract is to court faith, because what’s “there” is not recognizable in a traditional artistic sense: it must resonate beyond form. I cultivate that faith.’