Grant Recipients Grants to Artists Visual Arts 2026

Nanette Carter

Portrait of Nanette Carter in a pastel yellow room. Smiling at the camera, Carter is wearing a fuzzy orange sweater with black sleeves and a black and white striped head wrap. She is sitting on a section of a couch that is orange with a blue, pink, and yellow pattern throughout it. Behind Carter is another section of the couch, but this time it is in brown, with a small orange pillow with pink, blue, yellow, and red patterns on it. Three vibrant green plants are around Carter.
Photo by Joshua Woods.
  • 2026 Grants to Artists
  • Visual Arts
  • Visual Artist and Educator
  • Born 1954, Columbus, OH
  • Lives in New York, NY
  • She/Her
  •  
  • Additional Information
  • nanettecarter.com

Artist Statement

Working with intangible ideas around contemporary issues is my motivating force. Reading the news and following developments around the world has turned me into a chronicler of our time. I seek ways to translate these ideas into an abstract vocabulary of form, line, color, and texture. Through semiotics, I create frameworks for interpretation that invite viewers into the work. These are the challenges and creative instincts that intrigue me most.

My materials are oils on Mylar, which I collage to build my work. The physical nature of my process, especially when scaling toward larger works, becomes a marriage of painting and architectonics.

- December 2025 

Biography

Nanette Carter is an abstract painter and collage artist whose work engages with the socio-political realities unfolding worldwide. In response to global change, she relies on the semiotics of form, color, line, and texture to convey her themes. Having lived through the 1960s, Carter has witnessed wars, as well as profound social and economic shifts, and sees her practice as a form of documentation—capturing the spirit and complexity of life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Over the past five years, the titles of her series reflect the immeasurable changes and pervasive anxiety shaping our world. Cantilevered, a series of 63 oil-on-Mylar works, speaks to the struggle of maintaining balance in an ever-shifting environment. Drawing from the architectural term that gives the series its title, Carter uses cantilevering as a metaphor for living amid information overload, uncertainty, and pressure. The teetering forms evoke the strain of navigating social media, the pandemic, and the climate crisis, suggesting both the fragility of our stability and the necessity of letting go in order to regain balance. Another series, Shifting Perspectives, addresses a pressing question for the United States, Germany, and other democratic nations in 2026: “Can we hold on to democracy?" Through this work, Carter expresses a hope that we might move through the present chaos toward a more peaceful future.

Recent exhibitions include Afro Sentinels, Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH (2025); A Question of Balance and the Laurie Art Stairway Wall Installation, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ (2025); and Time Space Existence, Venice Architecture Biennial, presented by Almost Studio Firm (2025). Previous solo exhibitions include Simply Semiotics, Berry Campbell, New York, NY (2024); Nanette Carter, Gallery Ami Kanoko, Osaka, Japan (2019); Nanette Carter, Gallery Hatoba, Kyoto, Japan (2019); Esperanza en Armonía, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba (2018); and Nanette Carter, Alessandro Berni Gallery, Perugia, Italy (2017).

Carter has received numerous awards and grants, including the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2021), a grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation (2014), a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1994), a New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship (1990), and a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1981). She is a member of the Guild Hall's Academy of the Arts, East Hampton, New York (2023), has also served as a member of the Artistic Committee at Cinque Gallery, New York, NY (1988–1994), and as a member of the Board of Directors of The Harlem School of the Arts, New York, NY (2002–2006).

Carter holds an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute of Art (1978), and a B.A. from Oberlin College (1976). Her teaching career includes serving as a tenured Adjunct Associate Professor (2001-2021) and Coordinator for Undergraduate Drawing (2012-2015) at Pratt Institute of Art, Brooklyn, NY, and as the McMillan-Stewart Endowed Chair in Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (2023-2024).

Abstract collage of organic shapes and rectangles on Mylar against a white background. The shapes are painted with varying patterns and textures in blue, yellow, green, orange, red, black, white, gray, and brown. In the center of the collage, there is a shape that resembles a volumetric “O” painted with a brown and orange texture, which brings it to resemble rust. Directly under this shape is another one that looks like an arrow, also painted to resemble rust.

Cantilevered #28, 2016, metal & oil on Mylar, 17.25” x 15.5”.

Abstract collage of organic shapes and rectangles on mylar against a white background. The shapes are painted with varying patterns and textures in blue, yellow, green, orange, red, black, white, gray, and brown. In the center of the collage, there is a shape that resembles a volumetric “O” painted with a brown and orange texture, which brings it to resemble rust. Directly under this shape is another one that looks like an arrow, also painted to resemble rust.

Cantilevered #52, 2020, oil on Mylar, 52.5” x 49”.

Abstract collage of organic shapes on Mylar against a white background. The shapes are painted with varying patterns and textures in reds, grays, greens, browns, beige, and white. Three horizontal rectangles almost in the shape of an “E” begin from the bottom right corner of the collage to the bottom right corner of the white background, breaking the continuity of the organic shapes that are on top of one another, yet still sustaining it through the use of a similar brown texture.

Destabilizing #1, 2021, oil on Mylar, 72” x 67”.

Abstract collage of organic shapes and rectangles on mylar against a white background. The shapes are painted with varying patterns and textures in blue, yellow, green, orange, red, black, white, gray, and brown. In the center of the collage, there is a shape that resembles a volumetric “O” painted with a brown and orange texture, which brings it to resemble rust. Directly under this shape is another one that looks like an arrow, also painted to resemble rust.

Black and White #2, 2021, oil on Mylar, 25” x 18.5”.

Abstract collage of organic shapes and rectangles painted in varying patterns and textures against a white background. Long gray shapes build a horizontal foundation, which is decorated with an assortment of smaller blue, purple, yellow with gray, orange, and brown shapes.

Shifting Perspectives #1, 2022, oil on Mylar, 63” x 108”.

Abstract collage of organic shapes and rectangles on mylar against a white background. The shapes are painted with varying patterns and textures in blue, yellow, green, orange, red, black, white, gray, and brown. In the center of the collage, there is a shape that resembles a volumetric “O” painted with a brown and orange texture, which brings it to resemble rust. Directly under this shape is another one that looks like an arrow, also painted to resemble rust.

Shifting Perspectives #7, 2024, oil on Mylar, 84.5” x 30”.

Abstract collage of five large organic shapes made up of smaller ones, in addition to small triangle-like shape against a white background. All six pieces in the assemblage make use of the same colors, patterns and textures throughout, however, the individual pieces look different in their composition. The colors used include dark blue, baby blue, charcoal, light gray, and black.

Shifting Perspectives #8, 2024, oil on Mylar, 72” x 149”.