About NKS

About NKS

Nellie King Solomon (b. 1971, San Francisco, CA) is an architecturally trained painter who approaches painting with equal parts irreverence and admiration. In lieu of canvas and brushes Solomon paints on the sharp industrial material of Mylar using custom wood, glass, and rubber tools, pulling the paint in sweeping, gestural marks. Iconic abstract elements, bold colors, and unusual materials, like asphalt, swirl about, captivating the senses and revealing the tension between spontaneity and rigor at work in her practice. While some are meant to hang freely and be viewed as a rip in the wall of modern architecture, other large Mylar works are mounted to aluminum for a crisp architectonic finish.

Solomon takes a critical yet playful eye to painting. Trained as an architect, never licensed, which might explain why she establishes rules, grids, or frameworks, only to challenge their very existence. At the heart of her unique artistic practice lies the confident ability to think and explore beyond the frame.

Solomon studied Architecture at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City and holds a BA in Art from University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. She has taught Art at Stanford University and California College of the Arts, as well as provided architectural restoration on the Palazzo St Polo in Venice. She lived in Paris, Venice, Barcelona, and New York City before returning to California.

Select exhibitions include Oblivion Seekers: Scraping Heaven (2024) at The Fourth Wall Gallery in Oakland, CA, Draw the Line (in collaboration with Hamza Walker, Christopher Oliveira, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon)(2019) at LAXART in Los Angeles, CA, and Skyfuel (2015) at Ochi Projects, Los Angeles, CA.

Select museum exhibitions include SUPER-SILLY-US: Barbara Stauffacher Solomon & Nellie King Solomon(2023) at MarinMOCA in Hamilton, CA, Art, Earth and Sky (2023) at SMoCA Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, BEYOND: Works by Nellie King Solomon and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon (2021) at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art SMOCA, Way Bay I (2018) at BAMPFA Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA and Neo Mod: New Northern California Abstractionists (2005) at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA.

Solomon’s work has been featured in Art in America, Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Art Practical, Hyperallergic, Wallpaper, Harvard Review, and Architectural Digest, among other publications.

Solomon lives in an LA bungalow with her daughter and bunny, and works in her sundrenched studio in the Bendix Building in DTLA.

Quotes on NKS

Solomon’s works walk the line between attraction and repulsion… These are punk paintings — direct, in our face, muscular, and messy, cheekily thumbing their nose at good taste and order. They share a kinship with the works of a very different artist, Marilyn Minter, whose hyper-realistic paintings revel in a similar combination of glamour and trash, sensuality and revulsion.
Matt Stromberg, LA freelance visual art writer for the LA Times, Hyperallergic, Art Review LA, and more.
Wildly popular in her native San Francisco … they’re meant to be shared with everybody.
Steve Wynn, in Wynn Las Vegas & Macau Collections
A lively installation of painterly compositions by Nellie King Solomon.
Art in America
Stephanie Cash,
Nellie’s work straddles a great deal of historic terrain in painting, and never quite sits still. I find her lack of intimidation and head-first approach to painting exciting.
Robert Gunderman, LA Painter / Former co-owner of ACME
By venturing outside the narrow confines of historic color field painting Solomon paradoxically presents a beautiful argument for the continued relevance.
Matt Stromberg, LA freelance visual art writer for the LA Times, Hyperallergic, Art Review LA, and more.
Almost a decade later, the work is stronger than ever.
Huffington Post
Cherie Louise Turner,
Working with new authority … we have only begun to see what Solomon may make of it.
SF Chronicle
Kenneth Baker,
Solomon’s paintings feel like events rather than things… The work is by all accounts beautiful, but beyond looks, there is content to them—they are soulful, vivacious and charismatic—with a story to tell.
Pauli Ochi, Owner of OCHI PROJECTS LA / OCHI AUX LA / OCHI GALLERY SV ID
Bursting out of current painting expectation with relentless physicality, Nellie King Solomon’s work is big brash post-punk and expressionistic … Solomon is thoroughly sophisticated and historically conscious.
Int. Independent Curator
Natasha Boas PhD,
Talented, professional, generous, and driven, Nellie King Solomon is a joy to work with and people love her work!
Jennifer McCabe Morales SMoCA Director and Chief.
Nellie King Solomon’s work fits no definition of painting … to defend it as art (you) must referred to paintings of such people as Sam Francis, Morris Louis, and Helen Frankenthaler.
SF Chronicle
Kenneth Baker,
Only the sheer unforced lushness of Solomon’s work … the eye out for pleasure says yes to the drift, looseness and generosity of Solomon’s work.
SF Chronicle
Kenneth Baker,