Trails of Cascading Underwater Forests

Artist's statement

My paintings are about disappearing spaces; real and imagined, concrete and abstract, and the pathways used to get there. Both intimate and expansive, the abstract environment places the viewer in a fluctuating space of continual demolition and reconstruction. I encourage viewers to explore these distant yet intimate spaces. Dedicated scribbling, disintegrating architectural structures, and shifting organic forms creates an intricate world for the viewer to explore. The structures in this atmospheric space are evaporated, solidified, delapidated, lucid, transparent and iridescent. These various forms in turn create spatial zones between which the viewer may float back and forth, searching for a restful habitat.

Multiple layers create a space that suggests tunnels, spaces beneath the ground, and the reaches of outer space. These layers are both restful and chaotic; they provide the viewer with an entrancing web of information pulling one in to play amidst the universe.

The surfaces of my paintings create a tension between restlessness and calm. The restless surface suggests the possibilities of an endless ecstatic experience. I encourage the viewer to consider in my patings both the intimate and the expansive, the concrete and deteriorating structures and abstract passages.

The infinite painting surfaces should inspire the viewers to swim and play in these paintings as well, and in doing so, experience for themselves the complexities that I have intended my paintings to express.

Nathaniel Johnston Quinn

Nathaniel Johnston Quinn was born in Durham, North Carolina and grew up in a family of artists and musicians in Chapel Hill. His passion and talent for artistic expression showed itself early in his childhood and has been the central theme of his life.

Nathaniel Quinn’s vibrant work is both visually stimulating and intricate. He employs brush techniques and complex color composition to draw viewers into the details of expansive canvases and encourages viewers to explore their fluctuating, complex spaces.

Nathaniel Quinn spent two years at the Maryland Institute, College of Art before receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute and an Masters of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He works as a professional artist and has also taught college level painting and drawing at the University of North Carolina, Shaw University and Durham Technical Community College.

His work has been exhibited in group and solo shows on both coasts — in New York, Los Angeles, and in several galleries around the Triangle. In addition to his widespread, Quinn believes that artistic expression can serve as a powerful philanthropic tool. He recently donated a painting to an art auction in New York City to benefit The Children's Museum of the Arts, an organization that provides after school arts education to children in New York City's five boroughs. During his tenure in Los Angeles, he was the founder of the organization LifeForm, which raised funds for the Heart Project, an arts program for underserved communities in the Los Angeles area.

Quinn just returned from exhibiting in Barcelona, Spain. He continues to participate in group and solo shows across the United States.