17.4.08

NATHAN OLIVEIRA QUOTES


“My work has usually been universal. The figures have never really been that specific. They’re not clothed; they’re not identified with any trappings that specifically tie them down to 2005. It could be today, but they could be from some other time, a long time ago. So I do connect all the way back to the fundamentals of the cave.”

You’re sitting there with your muse and your muse is telling you something and you’re following it, and you end up the next day looking at it and thinking “what the hell was the muse saying to me?”

For me painting is that magical material, that beautiful stuff that was invented, the ground-up pigments in oil which makes it very malleable. It can be manipulated and changed, darkened, lightened, given different hues and colors, so that by manipulating this material somehow I can find that figure I’m looking for, that figure that represents all the issues I’m bringing up and addressing.”

Though I have considerable interest in Europe and in traveling, I am most content with simply working and allowing the world that I'm creating to unfold before my eyes.”

Given all the technology that we're in the middle of, I would be so pleased if someone would look at one of these prints and say, 'You know, I feel like that.' What I'm concerned about now is creating a metaphor for what the figure really is.”