Nathan OliveiraA Part of Nature

man standing in a classroom giving instruction
Nathan Oliveira giving a studio demonstration during a residence at Fullerton College, California, 1973. Courtesy of Fullerton College.

Painting from a live model was more than just a formal exercise in line and light for Nathan Oliveira; it was the part of his practice that connected him across time and filled his studio with the energy of a living being. “This is about us and nature, us as a part of nature.”1 Indeed, painting from a live model offered a link between the artist and the history of art: “It is something artists have shared over centuries.”2 The model was a spirited, not static, partner in Oliveira’s process. “I don’t seek to replicate the reality of the human figure, but to reach behind that, to a different reality born out of the language of gesture and the fluidity of the material that I use.”3

  1. Nathan Oliveira, in Kathan Brown, Why Draw a Live Model? (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 1997), 17. ↩︎

  2. Nathan Oliveira, in Kathan Brown, Why Draw a Live Model? (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 1997), 17. ↩︎

  3. Nathan Oliveira, in Kathan Brown, Why Draw a Live Model? (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 1997), 9. ↩︎