Rolina Nell

at second glance

There is more to Rolina Nell’s painting than first meets the eye. Her visually delightful painting technique does not entirely disguise an intriguing undercurrent in which emotions float freely and vital questions lie dormant. Women of all cultures take centre stage, or are represented by motifs that traditionally belong to women, such as laundry and playgrounds..

between fulfilment and satisfaction

A longing for self-realization and inner peace with life filters through the tranquil, melancholic paintings. Rolina Nell paints women who appear to silently adapt to their living conditions. The watery paint and the gesture of painting are discordant with the beautiful images and lead one to suspect subdued tensions. So the depiction, material and painting technique are in the service of her attention to the quality of life at an emotional level. This touches on collective, subconscious emotions. Every person has numerous expectations to fulfil and must join their culture and social environment. With herself also navigating between fulfilment and satisfaction, Rolina Nell accepts her responsibility as a visual artist. Her honest paintings are important because they make people think about their own position. The intimate images reflect the thinking, feeling and desiring individual. They tell of the possibilities for self-realization that apparently exist, albeit subtly, even in Iran.

Rolina Nell’s painting is in keeping with traditions of realism and formal painting. In content it appears to have much in common with the feminist body of thought, though on closer inspection the core focus is on more universal, existential questions. A distinguishing feature is that both the depiction and the gesture of painting generate meaning. Her increasingly headstrong game regarding space and depth, which either emphasize or indeed undermine each other, heightens the intensity of the viewing experience. The painted reality appears more penetrating than reality itself. Her use of accessories, clothing and other details follows on from an art-historical convention. In Christian iconography, for instance, the saints are identifiable by their attributes, among other things. Rolina Nell also subtly incorporates typifying accessories. As contemporary attributes, in a general sense, these reveal something about the presumed personality of the women. On a deeper level, the serenity of the life-sized paintings conveys something of the mystical power reminiscent of old frescos and images of saints.

By placing the female identity so centrally in her work, one might suspect a faint echo of feminism. Prescriptive laws from the Islamic world, in which women are barely visible, are indeed indicated briefly, but so too are the unwritten laws of fashion that exist here, within which girls must find their way. It would, however, do Rolina Nell an injustice to simply to leave it at that. Her work is more universal. She paints women because she herself is a woman. Her work encourages all people to think about their own life. With her painting she seeks to investigate how brush and paint can contribute towards the quality of existence. The simple brushstrokes, sensitive imagery and attractive colours carry the observer from an aesthetic, to a human, emotional level. With the idea that every person is what they make of themselves, her women express the effort it costs all people to be themselves.

Rolina Nell

rolina.nell@gmail.com