Nancy Lorenz (b. 1962) is a contemporary American artist whose distinctive work combines the language of postwar abstraction with materials and techniques drawn from both Asian and Western craft traditions. The resulting tension that this talented artist creates in her works between traditional compositional concerns and the patterns that naturally occur in nature is the driving force in all of her pictures. Working at the meeting point of painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts, Lorenz has developed a body of work that stands apart from most contemporary American painting.

Lorenz's formative years included time spent living in Japan, an experience that shaped her lifelong engagement with East Asian aesthetics and materials. She pursued her formal artistic training at the University of Michigan and completed her graduate education at Pratt Institute in New York. This dual foundation in American art school traditions and her direct exposure to Japanese aesthetic principles have given her the unusual range that defines her mature work.

Lorenz's signature practice draws on the rich Japanese and Korean traditions of gold leaf, silver leaf, palladium, moon gold, mother of pearl, and lacquer, applied to panels and canvases she has meticulously prepared with layers of gesso and plaster. She combines these luminous, historically resonant surfaces with more contemporary gestural approaches, producing pictures that seem to glow from within while carrying the tactile authority of centuries of refined craft. Her works reward slow, close looking, and their reflective surfaces respond to the changing light of the rooms in which they are installed.

Lorenz has exhibited widely at contemporary galleries in New York and internationally, and she is represented by Peter Blum Gallery in New York. She has also produced substantial design commissions for luxury clients including Louis Vuitton and Bergdorf Goodman, along with numerous public and private site-specific installations. Her paintings and panels are held in significant public and private collections, and she continues to develop her distinctive practice from her studios in New York.