Artist Bio

“Nelida” is my given name by birth. I didn’t much like this name when I was young which may have been why I signed with it instead of carry it around with me. Nelly had been my called name all my life, of which I changed its spelling to Nellie in junior high school because I wanted it spelled differently from its original spelling. I knew even then that I felt I was different and I suppose it was my way of making that clear. 

I am from a large family of 8: 4 brothers, 3 sisters, and a whole lot of fighting. Some say it is the Spanish blood, others the Indian. Who knows but growing up in the Southwest New Mexico our entire lives, having the freedom to run away into the desert, made the fighting at least a bit more enjoyable. Running barefoot in that dry desert was where I think I may have felt connected most to this marvelous piece of Earth we have. The rain made my desire explode for “tasting” its fresh elements. Whether it derived from that memory as a child or not, the need to paint and the things I painted or photographed, were conceived images in my mind and my heart that I never felt I needed to control. Nor wanted to. EVER! These images, I freely let control me. 

I paint, photograph (before digital) grind mineral rocks, I even cry and dance because I am released and uncontrolled by my emotions and chaotic expressions. 

Abstract became a way of opening up and letting of whatever it was I needed to release. Sand / mineral painting fulfills my need to “feel” free and connect with Earth again, not to mention unleash a few frustrations, and the photography gave me the instant gratification I needed at times to capture an image that could not be painted. 

My early years of drawing horses as a child (I love this beast), were the beginnings of the rest of my dreams to be an ‘Artist’. As far as I can recall, my dream was always to be just that. God gives us all gifts, and it is up to us to stir it up and allow to be shared. None is not gifted. NONE. The need to paint is just that; a need. There is no peace, no satisfaction, no rest or ‘normalcy’ until the images in my head are out of me. I perused this dream in college until somewhere along the line, I decided I could not paint this way or that way, and didn’t need a piece of paper to define who I felt I already was. I am self-taught simply because it is what I am.  

My family does not come from a long line of Artist, nor any remnant of affluency – we come from poverty, struggle, chaos and confusion, but all of us are artistically inclined in some form or other. I believe we developed something early on as an escape mechanism. My escape became my love. I paint because I am free when I am doing what I need to do, what I LOVE. It seems it has been the only thing that I have not “run away” from. The truest companion on this journey.  

I am not as young or free anymore to freely run through that dry desert, or taste its wet dirt on my tongue; Neither am I too old to forget what it was like to be free to dance barefoot in the rain, no matter where I am. I am in between. I am on a journey that I can finally embrace wholeheartedly, and cry in it, or laugh with it, or just dance through it and simply REVEL in it. I am on a journey of self-discovering WHO I truly am as ‘Nelida’.  This is who I am as an artist for life itself... the rest, that’s yet to be seen...