Nelson Gutierrez graduated from the Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lazano in Bogota Colombia. Upon receiving his BA degree in Fine Art, he began addressing the social and psychological implications of Colombia’s armed conflict on its civil society. His artistic process has led him to use a variety of different mediums including drawings, paintings, 3D objects, spatial constructions and installations. In 1999 he received his MA degree in Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London UK. He worked as a professor in the Fine Arts Departments at the Universidad de los Andes and the Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano, in Bogota, Colombia. In 2002 he moved to USA where he has kept developing and showing his artwork in addition to working as a Teaching Artist for different organizations such as Arts for Learning In Miami, FL and Children’s Studio School in Washington, DC. During this time he also attended the Corcoran College of Art where he did coursework in the MFA program. He currently lives and works in Memphis, TN.

Since the early 1990s, my work has focused on creating two and three dimensional artworks, conceptual objects and installations, based on current sociopolitical issues. Through art I have often tried to better understand the social and psychological implications of conflict and engage the public in self reflection. My art addresses issues of longing, fear, grief and vanity. I juxtapose materials such as charcoal, ink, wood, metal, blood, wax, water, glass, light and photographs that together have symbolic relevance to the issue I’m exploring. I use these different mediums to express these feelings and tell a story that is universally understood to us all but sometimes experienced more intensely by a subset of our societies.