"I am what is around me." Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems

Waves-Patterns-Particles, Changing States of Water, Alluvial Attraction, Abstraction / Form / Flow, Channeling The Force, Charting The Invisible, Navigating In The Dark , Reflections and Refractions: Required courses at the Mississippi River School. Observations and experiences in the way of water launched a lifelong quest for truth about beauty and dynamism and forces within nature.

art galleries

• Gold Leaf Studio, 1706 Prairie Du Chien Road
• Sales negotiations: contact artist (nancypurington@gmail.com)
• Appointments upon request

press

Capturing Unseen Forces, an article by Pamela Eyden about the nature of my work can be viewed in the 2012 January-February issue of Big River Magazine. >>view pdf

Art Talks with Bruce Carter -WVIK

A live conversation between artists; featuring painters, sculptors, musicians, arts administrators, poets, and others from around our region.

reviews

From her earliest works in the 1960s to her current pieces, Nancy Purington has pursued some of the same themes with relentless curiosity. In her art, she has looked to nature, to the fluidity of rivers and the swirling fixture of the skies, searching for the underlying patterns and mathematics that exist there, much as the physicists of today search for the grand Theory of Everything. Looking across four decades of work, what is obvious is the variety of imagery, the wild brilliance of color, and the way each piece is rich with ideas and emotions. She manages to balance a consistency of quality and themes with a need to explore and continually push past her existing boundaries of form and color. These are works that speak of the universe and the unseen forces that power the cosmos, and yet they are images I will think of the next time I step outside to take a walk in my neighborhood.

Terry Pitts, Emeritus Director, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, former Curator & Director, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona

 John Dilg, American Painter, describes the works of "Observational Evidence" by Nancy Purington as "Wonderfully expansive and minute-by-minute important. A sublime range to thinking and time." July, 2025

River of the Holy Spirit

In 1863, upon learning of Grant's success at Vicksburg, Abraham Lincoln wrote: "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea." This famous quote reflects the romantic nineteenth-century belief, heightened by Longfellow, that "father of waters" was the accurate translation of the Native-American name for the Mississippi River.  Those waters, source of inspiration to the artist Nancy Purington, have fascinated and beguiled the human race since the river's gradual formation at the end of the last Ice Age, nearly 10,000 years ago. We now know that "Mississippi" is a French rendering of the Ojibwe name for the great river, "Misi-ziibi."

In the nearly 500 years since Europeans first encountered it, this majestic river has carried many names. After De Soto's inadvertent sighting in 1541, he named it "Río del Espíritu Santo," the River of the Holy Spirit.  In 1883, Mark Twain places that historic moment in context; writing in "Life on the Mississippi," he comments: "When De Soto took his glimpse of the river, Ignatius Loyola was an obscure name; the order of the Jesuits was not yet a year old; Michel Angelo's paint was not yet dry on the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel..."

During their 1673 exploration, Marquette and Jolliet were learning the Sioux language for "big river" – but the Jesuit priest Marquette, Twain tells us, "...had solemnly contracted, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, that if the Virgin would permit him to discover the great river, he would name it Conception, in her honor."   And, despite La Salle's 1682 efforts to name the river for Colbert, the French finance minister, by the end of the 17th century, mapmakers in both Holland and France labeled the river with various spellings of the name "Mississippi."

Today, we celebrate the triumph of the Native-American word that gave us "Mississippi."  But for many of us who know and love the river, not least of all Nancy Purington, the description of these waters as "River of the Holy Spirit" somehow captures the metaphysical nature of this great stream.

D.W. Wright 

Nancy Purington's work graced the walls of the Minnesota Marine Art Museum's (Winona) 2013-14 exhibition, Tri-State Invitational: 3 Women from 3 States. I use the word "graced," not in the nonchalant way that we are used to hearing that word, but in an intentional way. The defining quality of Nancy's work is a distillation of the grandiose power and earthy grit of the Mississippi River environment into something graceful, precise and elemental. Her vision is a powerfully personal way of seeing the world - full of optimism and wisdom resulting from a lifetime of observation and love. This unique vision is reinforced through a skillful use of materials, yet often culminates in a subtle presence, with the greatest reward for patient eyes and an open heart and mind.

Andrew J. Maus, Executive Director, Minnesota Marine Art Museum (MMAM)

Luminous colors, studied textures, and repeating patterns are Nancy Purington's tools for expressing the ever changing moods of the Mississippi River. A self-described student of the mighty river, Purington's works are meditations on the Mississippi's moments of calm, bursts of overwhelming brightness, slow drifts of murky fog, and clashes at the confluence. Oils and precious metals are combined to capture golden and silver reflections against a background of mystic dark navies, satin backs, emerald blues, and pools of white. Purington places the viewer on the water's edge, ready to make either a peaceful passage or a dramatic battle down river to the gulf. Purington's work, like the river, has the ability to transport.

Melanie Alexander, Director, Muscatine Art Center

If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere. - Vincent van Gogh

As an artist Nancy Purington's very being is centered on the need to create and make order out the emotions engendered by her passion for the beauty of the natural world. Sky, clouds, water, rocks, shells - objects and images gathered, rendered both elemental and elegant.

I have always been impressed with Nancy's integrity as an artist. She does not rely on formula, instead relentlessly exploring an idea until it reaches its natural conclusion, sometimes revisiting a work over a period of years.

Moonlight on the Mississippi is the culmination of thousands of hours of living by, observing, remembering, dreaming and otherwise being inspired by the Mississippi River.

Barbara Christensen Kamp, Director, Muscatine Art Center

As early as the 1970s, the repetitive patterns and symbols in cut-pile cloth made by the Kuba peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo were particularly mesmerizing to Nancy Purington, which she encountered as she perused the renowned collection of African Art at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. As Nancy continued to explore the many languages of water, she identified with the significance of the Kasai River to the Kuba peoples. The geometric shapes, meander and moray patterns, loop-ribbon forms, and knot motifs, as well as the virtuosic dyeing, weaving and embroidery techniques presented by Kuba cloth, further inspired Purington to explore the possibilities of similar references in her Mississippi River works.

Kathleen A. Edwards, Senior Curator, University of Iowa Museum of Art

Nancy Purington's Mississippi River: Towards the Limits of Mystery

Artists are often drawn to the same subject over and over again. In Nancy Purington's case, it is the Mississippi river, for Monet it was water lilies and for Cezanne it was Mont Sainte Victoire. Why is this? If an artist has created a successful image of their subject, a powerful work of art, what propels them to revisit the same subject, scene, or place?

Perhaps they grapple to reveal the mystery of their subject, to capture not only the physical reality, but to express what is not visible to the human eye. German philosopher Josef Pieper, in his book, Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation, suggests that: "Before you can express anything in a tangible form, you first need eyes to see. The mere attempt, therefore, to create an artistic form compels the artist to take a fresh look at the visible reality; it requires authentic and personal observation." In looking again and again at his or her subject, the artist gains a "deeper and more receptive vision, a more intense awareness, a sharper and more discerning understanding, a more patient openness for all things quiet and inconspicuous, an eye for things previously overlooked."

When Purington puts color and form to paper, using oil, watercolor, pastel, gouache, and gold leaf to render the countless shapes and shades of a wave ebbing and swelling in the Mississippi, she brings the macrocosm of the river into focus. She helps us to see the endless beauty of the river and to contemplate the mystery of a moment, encouraging us to live, to look closer, again and again.

Jane Milosch, Visiting Professorial Fellow in Provenance and Curatorial Studies School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, and formerly Chief Curator, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

In considering the art of Nancy Purington it is significant to note her intense and enduring fascination with water in all its various states and forms. The artist recounts having grown up along the banks of the Mississippi River, and that as far back as she can remember, water has been a constant, compelling, and enduring presence in her life. Undoubtedly the flowing waters left their mark on her, washing over her as a stream will polish a stone, over time helping to mold and shape her into the artist she has become. Purington has welled and distilled her reservoir of experience to produce a deep and richly textured body of work. 

A master of rhythm and pattern, her work is at once concerned with aesthetics and rich in symbolism and associations. She recognizes that light and water enjoy a special and ever-changing relationship, the two engaged in perpetual interplay. In her studio, Purington bears witness to this exquisite dance. She expertly harnesses light, pairing it with arrangements of pigments, inks, dyes, sticks, stones, shells, pearls, gold, and oil. Her use of metallic elements perfectly mirrors the reflective qualities of her subject. 

Purington's work is beyond mere decorative effect, greater than a faithful reproduction of picturesque aquatic landscapes. Her images are not so much about the particular; they are deeper, more evocative. Purington helps us to truly see and feel water — a substance with very complex and seemingly contradictory optical properties and spiritual references. 

Nancy Purington is an alchemist, a visual choreographer, a revealer of universal truth, who transforms water into art — into images, emotions, and ideas. She encourages us to dive into her light-on-water magic and re-emerge mesmerized, satiated, moved, and transformed.

Kent Shankle, Director, Waterloo Center for the Arts