Éva Nielsen's Layered Landscapes: Painting and Screenprinting

Éva Nielsen combines painting and screenprinting to depict landscapes inspired by Parisian suburbs and urban wastelands. Her work, developed since her studies at the École des beaux-arts and Central Saint Martins in London, focuses on fragments of industrial architecture—water towers, glass facades, brick walls—often rendered in gray monochromes. She avoids human figures, instead exploring blurred focus and obstructed views through opaque black screenprinted planes that act as screens or revealers. Recently, she has reversed her process: painting now covers lighter, more transparent screenprinted areas, creating effects like dirty windows. She also uses an inkjet printer to apply subtle grids over watercolor or acrylic preparatory drawings. Nielsen works in series of unique pieces, destroying each screen after use, and paints diptychs that can be hung side by side or in corners. Her studio walls display reproductions of works by Jacob van Ruysdael, Georges Braque, Ed Ruscha, and Gordon Matta-Clark. She often paints while seated on the floor, sometimes upside down, to avoid systematic approaches. Her paintings exude calm despite the artist's own feverishness during creation.