Nathan was born on February 5, 1977, in Salem, Massachusetts and grew up in New Hampshire. In 2004, after spending several years painting, he moved to New York City. Nathan came to painting from film production, which he studied at Keene State College, graduating in 2000. Despite its abstract content, Nathan's work is tremendously informed by the cinema, foregrounding the image plane, the frame, and the interplay of material and light.

Artist Statement

My initial experiments in painting were small works made from found materials: scrap wood panels, foil candy wrappers, second-hand tubes of paint. Inspired by these cast-off materials, I began to make larger works with leftover house paint, polyurethane and tar. As I applied them one over the other I developed an approach that built on the tension between the layers. This tension is the central theme in my work, and in developing it I have sought to refine the interaction between the physical qualities of the materials and the manner in which I apply them. Initially, overwhelming the surface of a piece with texture produced a satisfying level of visual interest. Yet as I observed the urban environment around me-the walls of an old tenement, a neglected billboard, the steel girders of an elevated train-I found myself drawn to the visual appeal of surfaces that were the most worn down, rather than the most encrusted. Seeking a more significant balance between creation and destruction in the textural surfaces that define my work I began to scrape away at the accumulated layers of material. Partially exposed, previous layers achieved a palimpsestic quality, invigorating and elaborating on the visual complexity of the surface. Currently I use a flexible metal spatula to apply and remove enamel paint, working methodically from left to right, building up and scraping down layers with a vertical motion. The resulting surface is smooth yet dense with textural nuance and emphasizes subtle variations of tone, sheen and opacity. Through this synthesis of additive and reductive techniques my paintings evoke the beauty of the conflict between our efforts to renew our surroundings and the futility of these efforts in the face of time and nature.