Andrew Lincoln Nelson

Works on Paper

This drawing was show at the NAP 2013 "On Our Own Time" Exhibition at the University of Arizona. The drawing was completed in 2011 and is part of my series called The Living Machines. These works depict machine creatures living in futuristic landscapes.

Works on Paper

This is a Graphite drawing completed in 2013. It is part of my series entitled "The Living Machines" . These drawings depict autonomous living machine-like creatures. This particular drawing explores the issue of mobility, plant nature and animal nature. Here, the machine entity is either woven into a plantlike form, or is somehow part of the plant-like form.

Works on Paper

This is a mixed media painting done on paper which has been laminated to thin plywood and vanished. The work combines organic patterns with geometric abstract forms.

Works on Paper

This abstract work combines drawing, water-wash pastel, ink and watercolor with opaque latex paint overlay. The work is done on paper and is not varnished. The picture explores issues of scale in organic patterns and interaction of shape at a more abstract level.

Works on Paper

This abstract work, completed in 2014 combines drawing, water-wash pastel, ink and watercolor with opaque latex paint overlay. The work is done on paper and is not varnished. The picture explores issues of scale in organic patterns and interaction of shape at a more abstract level. Here, the larger of the two opaque shapes might represent a mother, host, or predator to the smaller. The exact nature of the relationship is not made clear, as might be the case if one were to peer briefly into a microscope to observe various unclassified forms.

Works on Paper

Complete in 2008, this drawing was the first fully rendered work in the Living Machines series. The name "Robot" has a legacy in my naming conventions, but the machine creature is closer to an evolving life form or living agent than a traditional robot.

Works on Paper

This small drawing (8 by 10) is a recent addition to the in the Living Machine Series. The creature depicted is more fully organic than those shown in previous series drawings. There is still a somewhat machine-like element implied by the squares covering the orb-like protrusions of the creature.

Works on Paper

The drawing depicts a sessile plant-like form with some machine parts.  In addition, a nest and small robot are shown. The work explores categorization concepts by blending machine, plant and animal aspects, and will serve as a study for a new drawing to be include in the Living Machine series.

Works on Paper

This graphite drawing depicts a machine-creature consisting of a spherical cage filled with twisted pipes and machine detritus.  The work was begun in 2014 and completed in 2015.  As with several other drawings in this series (“The Living Machines”), thematic elements from natural and artificial evolution are explored in the work.  Background elements are taken from the Santa Rita mountain range south of Tucson Arizona and East of I-19.  The main subject of the drawing, the spheroid machine-creature in the foreground, might have a vegetative intelligence rather than a high-level human-like form of intelligence.  It is shown interacting with its surroundings, grazing on sticks or perhaps doing some other vegetative activity.  This creature is somewhat less machine-like than those depicted in other drawings in this series, with no explicit “feet” and an amorphous character. 

Works on Paper

This graphite drawing is part of a series (The Living Machines) that depicts life as it might be on other worlds or on an Earth of the distant future.  In particular, the series explores post technological scenarios in which a fusion between which organic life and feral technology has occurred.  This drawing addresses the concepts of Lamarckian evolution and mimetic self-construction.  The central focus of the work is a largely biological entity, with no explicit machine elements.  This entity has both plant-like and animal-like components, and might fancifully be called a Plantimal.  The creature is shown investigating its surroundings, which contain technological and machine detritus.  Here, the creature has taken on some aspects of the machine remnants in its environment.  The background is a composite of elements taken from the Superstition Mountains northeast of Phoenix, Arizona and eroded volcanic cores from various locations.  “Robot 29” is followed in the Living Machine series by “Robot 30”, which continues the theme of the Plantimals.

Works on Paper

This is one of the most visually direct drawings in the “Living Machine” series.  As with other works in this series, this drawing explores themes of mimetic evolution, Lamarckian evolution and self-construction.  A large organic spheroid creature (a “Plantimal”) mimics the form of a smaller more machine-like creature which it is carrying.  The background is taken largely from a view of low mountains north of Interstate 8 near the Arizona-California border.

Works on Paper

The Phytoborg series is a subseries of the Living Machines.  A “Phytoborg” is a vegetative lifeform that fuses machine and living plant-like elements.  As with the machine-creatures in the Living Machine series, these vegetative machine-plant creatures embody visions of post-technology life or of exo-biological life.  The “tree” in “Phytoborg 2” is largely organic in appearance, but includes cube-like shapes that suggest a machine or non-biological origin.  The drawing is more overtly surrealistic than other drawings in this series and may serve at the genesis of a series of Surrealistic Evolution images.  In a sense, “Phytoborg 2” is a departure from other works in the living machine series because there might not be any possible natural history that could account for the landscape and subject, even an alien one.

Works on Paper

Surreal Trees 1: Robot 35: "Surreal Evolution Series” Medium: Graphite on paper (Bristol Board). Original Drawing Size: 18” high by 24” wide.  Framed size: 22” high by 28” long (side-to-side width) by 1” wide (depth of frame).  Year of completion: 2016.  Description: These surreal block-trees in this picture are similar to the Phytoborgs in the Living Machines series of drawings.  A “Phytoborg” is a vegetative lifeform that fuses machine and living plant-like elements.  In this work though, the ground and sky are un-earthlike and perhaps on a microscale.  This is the most surreal work of mine to date.

Works on Paper

Phytoborg 3, Robot 33: “Surreal Evolution Series” Medium: Graphite on paper (bright vellum). Original Drawing Size: 18” high by 24” wide.  Framed size: 22” high by 28” long (side-to-side width) by 1” wide (depth of frame).  Year of completion: 2016. Showings: 2017 Art of Planetary Science juried show held at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Science Lab (LPL).  Description: Phytoborg 3 is part of a series of drawings (The Living Machines) that depict astrobiologyical landscapes.  A “Phytoborg” is a vegetative lifeform that fuses machine and living plant-like elements. These vegetative machine-plants might be post-technology life or exo-biological forms of life.  The spheroid “tree” in “Phytoborg 3” is organic in appearance, but is covered by square shapes that suggest a machine or non-biological origin.  The surrounding ground in the drawing is covered by spongy fungus-like mounds that continue toward the horizon.  These might represent some alien mono-culture landscape, but the mounds have slightly different morphologies.

Works on Paper

Robot 34/Plantimal 4: “The Living Machines Series/Surreal Evolution Series”.  Medium: Graphite on paper (bright vellum). Original Drawing Size: 18” high by 24” wide.  Framed size: 22” high by 28” long (side-to-side width) by 1” wide (depth of frame).  Year of completion: 2016.   Showings: 2017 Art of Planetary Science juried show held at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Science Lab (LPL).  Description:  This drawing explores astrobiology and exobiology from a somewhat surrealistic point of view.  Life on other worlds or on Earth in the distant future may exploit different evolutionary and developmental strategies than those in evidence on Earth now. The central focus of the work, a large organic spheroid creature, is a mainly biological entity, but has cube-like trees growing on its back.  These cubes may have had a distant technological origin, or might represent some kind of mimetic developmental process. This creature in this drawing has both plant-like and animal-like components, thus the label “Plantimal”.   The background is taken from a view of hills and mountains just south of Kitt Peak in Arizona.

Works on Paper

What would it be like to look upon an utterly non-human unearthly entity?  How would a landscape feel if it were occupied by something that was truly not us?  Is there some common nature shared by all possible forms of life, even those that might never come to pass?
Osteo Borg 1 was included in Manifest's international drawing annual 13 exhibition-in-print at http://www.manifestgallery.org/nda/inda13/