Nelli Gaspar

Paints in East Lansing. Studies biochemistry at Michigan State.

No way to get in touch is published yet. It will appear here.

Foreword

Chemistry taught me to look. Painting taught me to keep looking after I think I have understood.

I spend my weeks learning how the smallest machinery of living things fits together — how a folded protein decides what it will and will not hold onto, how a reaction tips one way instead of another. I spend the hours around them painting.

The two are the same habit wearing different clothes. A pigment is a chemistry problemCadmium yellow is cadmium sulfide. Prussian blue is an iron cyanide complex discovered by accident in 1706. Half the names on a paint tube are just chemistry with better marketing. that happens to be beautiful, and a protein structure is a shape you have to keep turning over before it tells you anything.

What follows is a working catalogue. It is not finished and it is not meant to be.

List of plates

  1. NG-2024-001 Chlorophyll Study
  2. NG-2024-002 Notebook Margins
  3. NG-2024-003 Sea Glass
  4. NG-2024-004 Titration
  5. NG-2025-005 Study in Amber
  6. NG-2025-006 Solvent Front
  7. NG-2025-007 Buffer Solution
  8. NG-2025-008 Late Bench Hours
  9. NG-2025-009 Orchard in October

Plates

Every plate below is a placeholder drawn by this website, not a photograph of a painting. The titles, dimensions and dates are invented, and the catalogue numbers are positions in this list rather than accessions from any collection.

NG-2025-009Orchard in October, Watercolour on paper46 × 32 cm
NG-2025-008Late Bench Hours, Oil on canvas70 × 55 cm
NG-2025-007Buffer Solution, Oil on canvas55 × 40 cm
NG-2025-006Solvent Front, Watercolour on paper42 × 30 cm
NG-2025-005Study in Amber, Oil on canvas80 × 60 cm

The other half of the day

Field
Biochemistry
At
Michigan State University
Based in
East Lansing, Michigan

Biochemistry is the study of the chemistry that living things run on, and it is quietly an intensely visual field. Most of what it does is make something invisible show itselfA stain, a gel, a column, a spectrum. Every one of them is a way of turning something you cannot see into something you can look at. That is not so far from a drawing. — and then argue about what the picture means.

The part I keep coming back to is shape. A molecule does what it does because of how it is folded, and getting from a flat diagram to an actual three-dimensional understanding of it is an act of imagination as much as of memory.

NG-2024-004Titration, Acrylic on board45 × 45 cm
NG-2024-003Sea Glass, Watercolour on paper38 × 28 cm
NG-2024-002Notebook Margins, Ink and wash on paper30 × 21 cm
NG-2024-001Chlorophyll Study, Acrylic on board50 × 50 cm

How a painting happens

  1. Look longer than feels necessary

    Most of a painting happens before any paint does. I sit with a subject until I notice the thing I had not noticed.

  2. Mix, test, mix again

    Colour gets tried on scrap first. A shade that looks right alone is often wrong beside its neighbourWhich is simultaneous contrast, and it is the reason a swatch book lies to you., so nothing is decided until it is decided in company.

  3. Stop one step early

    The hardest part is putting the brush down while the surface still has air in it. Overworked is worse than unfinished.

Catalogue

Catalogue of works, NG-2024-001 – NG-2025-009. Every row links to its plate above. Dimensions are height × width.
No. Title Year Medium Dimensions
NG-2024-001 Chlorophyll Study Acrylic on board 50 × 50 cm
NG-2024-002 Notebook Margins Ink and wash on paper 30 × 21 cm
NG-2024-003 Sea Glass Watercolour on paper 38 × 28 cm
NG-2024-004 Titration Acrylic on board 45 × 45 cm
NG-2025-005 Study in Amber Oil on canvas 80 × 60 cm
NG-2025-006 Solvent Front Watercolour on paper 42 × 30 cm
NG-2025-007 Buffer Solution Oil on canvas 55 × 40 cm
NG-2025-008 Late Bench Hours Oil on canvas 70 × 55 cm
NG-2025-009 Orchard in October Watercolour on paper 46 × 32 cm