Intriguing combination of separate exhibitions — Pamela Nelson at Cidnee Patrick and David Bates at the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art. Both SMU art grads. Both are upper middle class American artists who make Folk Art like images for a living. Both were immensely popular in the 80s.

Bates still is. People who've never seen his work want to track it down and buy it. He's investment grade. Nelson's sudden turn away from the fun and often funny, faux folk work that made her famous, was less successful.

Though her descent into abstraction did not net a lot of new fans, some of her work is in the collection of the President of the United States, and First Lady Barbara Bush was a special guest at Pamela's Legend Award dinner.

David Bates - Woodpeckers, 1998
painted fabric, wood and metal

Both artists have undergone significant transitions of style and format over the intervening decades, although Bates' subjects and many of his compositions have not changed. Pamela may, finally, have returned from her voyage through academic abstraction of the dull and drab kind.

Nelson's colors have turned brighter, and she's once again incorporating wit and wisdom with words. Her distinctive, multicolored, daubed patterning is ubiquitous, although we haven't — and may never again — see the buttons and glitter.

In recent years, Bates has been tentatively exploring the third dimension — essentially extending his usual compositions of woodsy folk, flora and fauna a few inches out from the canvas. Nelson's once fully dimensional work has become largely flat.

Both shows are vivid and colorful. Pamela's at Cidnee Patrick is bright, busy and informal. David's should have been at the DMA and kinda looks like it was, all formal in the dark, museum-like Dallas Center for Contemporary Art galleries.

Bates is this year's DCCA artist Legend-award winner, and Nelson was a few years back. His retrospective is stately and formal. Her self designed show was a whimsical delight.