Andrew Lincoln Nelson

Works on Paper

Osteo Borg 1, 18x24” Graphite Bristol Board, 2017.
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?  Perhaps nature will fuse biology and feral technology into future ecosystems that bear only the slightest hint of their anthropoid origins

Works on Paper

This graphite drawing was completed in 2017 and is part of a series of surreal evolution illustrations.  The work depicts a tree-like form with rectangular toroids made of a bony or ossified material.   The tree-form is skeletal and may or may not be alive.  Surrealism and academic realism are combined in this work to create an image of a physically possible form, but one that contains elements that are un-natural in some sense.

Works on Paper

How would a landscape feel if it were occupied by something not made by or for humans, something existing without regard to our sentiments? The graphite drawing Phyto Ost 2 combines concepts from exobiology, artificial evolution, technology-infused ecosystems and mathematics to create an unearthly or distant-future plant-like form situated in an otherwise lifeless landscape. The drawing is part of a series of hand-drawn images that explore non-anthropoid and feral-technology-infused entities and ecosystems. A further goal of these works is to stimulate emotions or experiences associated with viewing objects of unknown origin, with no name, and with no overtly human connection. Phyto Ost 2 also contains elements of surrealism, photo-realism, and landscape rendering and juxtaposes the concepts of subject and background by including a high level of detail throughout the rendering.

Works on Paper

The graphite drawing “Osteoborg 2”, 2018, is part of a series of renderings of non-anthropomorphic organisms and future landscapes. This work explores speculative theories of exobiology and the fusion of feral technologies with biological ecosystems. The aspect of water implies reflection, alterations introduced by surface variations, and invisible depth, perhaps reflecting commonalities among all possible forms of life. Is there perhaps something we feel and share at a visceral level? When something catches your eye, does that mean you share affinity with it?

Works on Paper

“Phyto Ost 3” is a quasi-surrealistic rendering of three tree-like forms growing out of an arid dried-mud playa. The trees have orb-like crowns composed of filamentous boney cubes, hence the name Phyto Ost or Bone Plant. The cube-like shape of the bones might indicate that they have an unnatural origin. These trees might be alive or they might be only skeletons of wood and bone, the last traces of life on an aging planet. The drawing was done by hand, requiring about 6 weeks of drawing time.

Works on Paper

An Osteoborg is a sort of bone-robot, a truly surreal machine. The upper portion of this creature is an irregular mass of cubes composed of a bone-like material. The lower portion is a conglomeration of robot or zooborg (animal-machine) parts. This creature must have had machine ancestors but now is self-sustaining and integrated into its desert environment. The biological organisms that created the technologies that this life form now uses have been extinct for eons. If the landscape shown here is of a distant-future Earth, then it would appear that Gaia has taken what she needs from us for her great work of creation, and then washed us away with her great eraser, time.

This drawing was done entirely by hand with graphite on Bristol board (as with all my work). Calculations of transforms and planar projections were done by hand or using slide rules and/or various other archaic analog techniques.

Works on Paper

An Anthozoaborg is a machine colony-organism hybrid, something like a coral reef cyborg. The detailed drawing entitled “Anthozoaborg 1” depicts one such creature. This particular one is roaming the desert in an impossible future New Mexico. It has three large head-like group-communities and a set of shared bio and mecha motility flanges (legs). The creature has partially ensconced itself in the branches of a dead and bark-less tree. As in other works in this series, the creature and environment depicted could perhaps be physically consistent in some sense. The subject, though, does not seem to have a possible origin: there is no real possibility that this creature could come to exist in a natural way. If it were to pop into existence somehow, however, it might persist for a while before succumbing to our regimented reality.

Works on Paper

This drawing was completed in May 2020. Part of a series entitled Surreal Trees, an Osteo-Rhizophor is a "Bone Mangrove". In the same vein as Osteoborgs and Phytoborgs, this Osteo-Rhizophor might be an example of exobiology, or might exist on Earth in the very distant future. This drawing contains several surreal elements but does not fit completely into the surreal rubric. There are elements of scale incongruity and overall strangeness, but the tree’s form remains a realizable 3-dimensional shape. The work also includes a high degree of detail in the water, mountains, and reflections so that the imposing main subject is somewhat counterbalanced in focus. This austere and irreal future vision is intended to convey distance in time, space, and kinship: this orb-like mangrove tree with boney tube-like shell parts might have come from familiar plants, but the relationship is distant.

The drawing was done entirely by hand with graphite on Bristol board (as with all my work). Calculations of transforms and planar projections were done by hand or using slide rules and/or various other analog techniques.

Works on Paper

Phytotessellost means geometric plant bone or tree bone. This graphite drawing shows a three-lobed tree-like form with the lobes being composed of or tiled with regular triangles, squares, pentagons and hexagons. Trees such as these might grow in the distant future when life on Earth is no longer easily categorized into well-defined species. Life forms with multiple origins might someday be able to fuse into single entities. The tree in this drawing contains geometric, bone-like and plant-like components and perhaps has been influenced by technology. As with other recent drawings in this series, the work borders on the surrealistic.