California artist Nancy Eckels completed a 20 painting, 2 month exhibition at Stanford Art Spaces on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California in late 2009.  In addition, one of her paintings was recently featured on NBC’s LXTV Open House New York, where designer Courtney Cachet chose her work to help complete the makeover of a room in a New York home.  In addition she was a finalist in “The Artist’s Magazine” National Competition 2010 and was awarded a mention in the December 2010 issue. She is also a signature member of the International Society of Acrylic Artists

Nancy has been painting full time for thirteen years since ending another creative career.  As a child, she dabbled in art, but always wanted to experience show business. She happily worked in television for many years, and was a director on the CBS daytime drama, "The Bold and the Beautiful" when she decided to move on to painting. Given her family background, it seemed like the most natural transition she could make.  Her parents met in an oil painting class, and her sister, aunts and uncles are all artists.

"My paintings are improvisational. I just begin to paint, ponder, and paint again. I paint what I feel in my heart and imagination, not what I see in front of me, which translates not to a representation of something tangible, but to a painting full of emotion and thought."

Nancy approaches her work with a determination that she will finish with something that pleases her eye, her emotions, and her sense of purpose. When painting, her focus is complete and exhaustive, excluding all outside influences, including the list of other tasks she meant to accomplish that day. Complete focus is depleting and exhilarating all at once, but results in a mental "zone," which produces her best creations.

Improvisation lends itself to experimentation and playfulness. Eckels is never tied down to traditional implements, but uses many unusual tools, including paper towels. Her process of adding and subtracting paint is key to the final creation, with layers of paint being removed, added, partially covered, scratched through, and scraped. She plays with color, texture, and composition, always changing, rearranging, and enjoying the results of her new discoveries in color combinations, color layering, and changing shapes and textures.

She considers herself self-taught, although she gained quite an education through "osmosis" while hanging around talented family members. There was no formal art education, but she has learned much from workshops with several experimental abstract painters, including Katherine Chang Liu, Carole Barnes, and Pat Dews.

Nancy will be painting as long as she can hold a brush. It's a passion that will not be lost to retirement.  She lives with her husband in Canyon Country, California