Nelson Gutierrez graduated from the Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano 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 have 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 the USA where he continued developing and showing his artwork in addition to working as a teaching artist for different organizations such as Arts for Learning in Miami, FL, Children’s Studio School in Washington, DC and the Workhouse in Lorton, VA. During his time in DC, he also attended the Corcoran College of Art where he did coursework in the MFA program.

Since 2014, he has lived and worked in Memphis, TN where he has served as an Exhibition Committee Member for the Memphis Brooks Museum of Arts, an Artist Advisory Council Member for ArtsMemphis, and an Official Advisor for Locate Arts in Nashville, TN. He has also worked in some public art projects in the city, including the Memphis Upstanders mural at Facing History and Ourselves and the Stairwell murals in the Fogelman Building at the University of Memphis.

My work includes two and three dimensional artworks, based on current sociopolitical issues. Through art I have strived 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, 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 ideas and tell a story that is universally understood to us all but sometimes experienced more intensely by a subset of our societies.