George Nelson Preston, 2023. | Photo by Frank Stewart, Courtesy the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery New York
RYAN LEE GALLERY in New York added George Nelson Preston (b. 1938) to its roster. Preston makes mixed-media, abstract paintings. In the representation announcement, the gallery described his work as “rooted in the memory and historical trauma of the Atlantic world and his own family legacy, even as his paintings seek to transport the viewer into the spiritual realm.”
In 2022, Ryan Lee presented “Afro-Atlantica: The Aqueous Continent,” its first solo show of Preston. Next month, his second solo exhibition is launching the gallery’s fall season. “Ayahuasca Notebook Paintings: Journeys and Returns” opens Sept. 5 and features a new body of work produced over the past two years.
“I first saw Preston’s paintings at Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami—they bowled me over,” Ryan Lee Co-Founder Mary Ryan said in a statement. “I thought that they were the work of an emerging artist, so I was surprised to learn that he’d been painting since the 1950s. He is in a remarkably productive and fresh period in his painting practice.”
George Nelson Preston’s paintings ‘bowled me over.… He is in a remarkably productive and fresh period in his painting practice.”
— Ryan Lee Co-Founder Mary Ryan
BORN IN HARLEM, Preston is an artist, scholar, writer, and collector who has been painting since his teen years. He has an eclectic background. Preston grew up next door to artist Charles Alston and met artists Robert Gwathmey and Chaim Gross in high school. In the 1950s, Preston was immersed in the avant-garde art scene in the East Village, where he established the Artist’s Studio. Located in his storefront loft, the Artist’s Studio became a nexus for Beat poets such as LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg. During this time, Claes Oldenburg, was his next door neighbor.
Preston’s first solo exhibition was presented in 1959 at Phoenix Gallery in New York. Beginning in the 1960s, his travels throughout the Caribbean, Africa, South America, and Europe have profoundly influenced his practice. Preston first visited Brazil in the 1980s and established enduring connections with Brazilian culture, institutions, artists, and scholars.
Over the past decade, solo exhibitions of his work have been presented by Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami, Fla. (2022); Burger Gallery at Kean University in Union, N.J. (2019); and Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba House in New York, N.Y. (2016). He has also been featured in key group exhibitions: “So Let Us All Be Citizens Too” at David Zwirner gallery in London (2023); “Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City 1952-1965” at Gray Gallery at New York University (2017); “Like NOW: Adger, Melvin & George” with Adger W. Cowans and Melvin Van Peebles at Merton D. Simpson Gallery in New York, N.Y. (2015); and “Black Baseball” at Leroy Neiman Gallery in Harlem, N.Y. (2012).
GEORGE NELSON PRESTON, “How I Introduced Shaman Txai Kuin and Okomfo Yaa Fosia,” 2024 (oil, acrylic, and paper collage on canvas in two parts; 48 x 72 1/8 inches /121.9 x 183.2 cm, overall; 48 x 36 inches / 121.9 x 91.4 cm, each). | © George Nelson Preston, Courtesy the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
Preston finished his bachelor’s degree in liberal arts at the City College of New York in 1963 and went on to earn an M.A. and Ph.D., in art history from Columbia University (1968, 1973). He earned his doctorate the same year he designed and curated the African Hall of the Brooklyn Museum (1973), where the collection installation remained on view for a decade. An emeritus professor, Preston taught African art history at the City University of New York (1973-2006). In 2006, he co-founded the Museum of Art and Origins in Upper Manhattan and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, showcasing his own collection, which is anchored by his expansive holdings of classical African art. Among his writings, Preston contributed to the recent exhibition catalog “Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine.”
His talents and interests are formidable, varied, and ultimately connected to his enduring curiosity and quest for cultural knowledge and spiritual enlightenment. “Ayahuasca Notebook Paintings: Journeys and Returns,” the forthcoming exhibition at Ryan Lee draws on Preston’s experiences traveling in Brazil.
The works explore natural, spiritual, and historical themes—motifs referencing water; shaman figures; real and imagined landscapes and the role of the picture plan as a liminal space between the subjective and objective worlds; and Afro Atlantic connections among the United States, Africa, and Brazil. The title of the show references “ayahuasca,” a plant-based psychedelic.
“When you ‘travel’ by ayahuasca you metaphorically climb a mountain, ‘repair’ at the summit and come back down to earth accompanied by native guardians, spoken words and music,” Preston said in the exhibition announcement. “As you journey, if you do not resist or fear you will go through many states of mind that take away fear, hate and all the anti-humanist instincts.” CT
“Ayahuasca Notebook Paintings: Journeys and Returns” is on view at Ryan Lee Gallery in New York, N.Y., from Sept. 5-Oct. 19, 2024
FIND MORE about Goege Nelson Preston on his website and Ryan Lee Gallery
GEORGE NELSON PRESTON, “From the Ayahuasca Notebook: Carlos Doethyró Tukano Contemplating Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon and Beyond (II),” 2022 (oil on canvas, 48 x 72 1/8 inches / 121.9 x 183.2 cm). | © George Nelson Preston, Courtesy the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
GEORGE NELSON PRESTON, “From the Ayahuasca Notebook: Shaman Txai Kuin Contemplating Arpoador Beach and Beyond (II) / Do caderno de Ayahuasca: Pajé Txai Kuin contemplando a Praia Arpoador e´alem (II),” 2022 (oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches / 61 x 45.7 cm). | © George Nelson Preston, Courtesy the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
GEORGE NELSON PRESTON, “From the Ayahuasca Notebook: The Conquest of Futility: A Kongo Nganga Stills the Boulder of Sisyphous While Pajé Txai Kuin Climbs Jacob’s Ladder Only to Meet His Own Soul,” 2023 (Oil, acrylic, charcoal, and paper collage on canvas in two parts; 60 x 72 inches / 152.4 x 182.9 cm, overall; 60 x 36 inches / 152.4 x 91.4 cm, each). | © George Nelson Preston, Courtesy the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
GEORGE NELSON PRESTON, “From the Ayahuasca Notebook: The Huni Kuin’s House of the Blue Mountain,” 2024 (oil, acrylic, and graphite on canvas, 60 1/4 x 48 inches / 153 x 121.9 cm). | © George Nelson Preston, Courtesy the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
GEORGE NELSON PRESTON, “From the Ayahuasca Notebook: Shaman Txai Kuin Contemplating Arpoador Beach and Beyond (III),” 2023 (oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches / 45.7 x 61 cm). | © George Nelson Preston, Courtesy the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
BOOKSHELF
George Nelson Preston published “African Art Masterpieces,” featuring images and texts about 48 works in 1991. Also consider the recent exhibition catalog “Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine.” Preston is among the contributors.
