Meet Artist Kadir Nelson

Kadir Nelson (b. 1974) is an American artist and illustrator whose works have appeared in major American and international publications, institutions, art galleries, and museums. Nelson earned a Bachelor’s degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and upon graduating began working with Steven Spielberg’s production studio, Dreamworks SKG, as a visual development artist creating concept artwork for the feature films, Amistad, and Spirit:Stallion of the Cimmaron. Throughout the artist’s award-winning career Nelson has created artwork for clients including Sports Illustrated, Coca-Cola, The United States Postal Service, Major League Baseball, and The US House of Representatives, among others. Nelson has also gained acclaim for the artwork he has contributed to best-selling picture books including his authorial debut, WE ARE THE SHIP: The Story of Negro League Baseball, published by Disney/Hyperion in the spring of 2008.

 Meet Kadir Nelson at the Arts Council (301 Hay St.) on March 25 from 7 to 9 p.m. during his book-signing!

Nelson’s style of painting varies to suit his subject and is primarily informed by an eclectic school of figurative artists that includes Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, Gustav Klimt, Norman Rockwell, Andrew Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Ernie Barnes, and Charles White, among several others. As a source of inspiration for the paintings in in WE ARE THE SHIP, Nelson drew upon the epic paintings and sculptures of Michelangelo, NC Wyeth, and Charles White, as well as the classic photographs of Charles “Teenie” Harris, and baseball photographer Charles M. Conlon. Nelson chose to present the history of the Negro Leagues with large oil paintings that juxtapose action and still images, and portray ballplayers both on and off the field to create an intimate, fully rounded portrait of the ballplayers and the world they inhabited.

Nelson was introduced to the story of the Negro Leagues upon researching a painting he was commissioned to paint in 1996. Serendipitously, Ken Burns’ documentary, BASEBALL, was airing on PBS around this time and featured the late Buck O’Neil, a former player and manager in the Negro Leagues whose vibrant descriptions of life as an African-American ballplayer in the Jim Crow era of the United States captured the artist’s attention. The painting he was researching would ultimately grow into fortyseven paintings over the span of a decade, most of which would be included in the book, WE ARE THE SHIP.

Nelson's talent has also been recognized nationally with the introduction of stamps featuring his artwork. Click here to read the US Postal Service's press release on the stamps created by Nelson.

Learn more about Kadir Nelson's accomplishments at http://www.kadirnelson.com/.