Artist Ment Nelson preserves the rich culture of the South with paint—and rainwater
Most of us see a South Carolina downpour as a sopping-wet inconvenience. The canceled plans, the muddy paw prints, the cut-it-with-a-knife thick humidity that follows. Ment Nelson, however, sees it as a gift.
When the sky opens, the self-taught watercolorist collects what falls and paints with it. “I just felt spiritually led to paint with rainwater,” he says of a practice he began back home in Varnville, the Hampton County town where he was raised. “It’s like a collaboration with the Creator every time I make something. And I never know when it’s going to rain, so I’ve got to be ready.”
Nelson’s soulful work has captured the imagination—and the Gullah-Geechee culture that inspires him—from a young age; teachers told the artist he was gifted in the third grade, and he won his first art competition in the fourth. He would steal away to the school computer lab to look up pencil and charcoal portraiture and study the work of icons such as Mary Whyte. But his style has always been wholly his own, as if he was born with it already in his fingertips. And his subject matters arrives much like the rain: unexpectedly.
“I can’t just see a picture of something and be like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna paint that,'” Nelson reflects. “I have to be spiritually connected to what I’m capturing.” A baptism scene came out of his mother’s photo album, depicting his little brother in the water, an image she’d kept for decades alongside a lock of his own first haircut. A foot-washing piece was inspired by a 1920s photograph and from the church of his childhood. And lately, his passion for style has turned into painted luxury denim and other fashion collaborations.
Nelson moved from Charleston to the Upstate in 2020, and his work has traveled, too: From the Meyer Vogl gallery in the Lowcountry to a traveling Smithsonian exhibit, and to the inbox of a startling number of famous people—including Spike Lee, Shonda Rhimes, and Winona Ryder. The sought-after watercolor savant also happens to be a filmmaker, a former rapper, and, increasingly, a designer. “I’m interested in all of the arts,” he says. “I just want to fulfill my purpose. I never know how I can be used.”
No matter where his talents take him, Nelson believes that the Lowcountry will always be at the heart of his creative inspiration. “Once the Gullah-Geechee culture dies, that’s the root of Black American culture,” he says. “I’ve always thought it was my role to preserve it—and to advance it, too.”
3 PLACES TO FIND HIS WORK
- Watercolors on mentnelson.com
- Fashion collabs on Instagram at @mentnelson
- Black cowboy culture documentaries on Youtube at @realmentnelson
