Danielle Nelisse

Danielle Nelisse is a painter who recently moved her art studio onto a boat from southern California to the Hawaiian island of Maui. Nelisse began painting her series of dynamic tree paintings after her art studio was surrounded by nine wildfires when she was still in California.

Many of her large oil paintings start out on canvas laid flat on the floor, with vertical and horizontal marks as the starting point. Using palette knives and different sized brushes, Nelisse applies oil paint in expressive lines, relying on bold gestures. The canvas is then put upright on an easel, and in the end, a fiery lemon yellow background may be contrasted with angled parallel magenta, teal, and lavender tree trunks.