When I was growing up, there was a game I played at my grandma’s called Kerplunk. You’d load up marbles in a tube on rods that poked through the tube. You’d then remove the sticks slowly until all the marbles fell through. I feel like managing my energy to paint is like playing Kerplunk, with…

This is the first major painting I’ve done for what will be a show at Irma Freeman Center in 2025. I think this condenses the range of thoughts and feelings I have about Pittsburgh as a medieval world into a strong visual statement. The simplest way I can put it into words is that I…

I’m back to painting after the show. It’s been hard to find a good rhythm again, but I’ve started to pick up steam. I wanted to record some of my initial thoughts about my new project direction: The Medieval World. I think there are a few reasons I want to try this and I’ll list…

Thanks to everyone who has come out to see it over the last month and a half. I really appreciated having a packed opening night. It’s good to know that I have an audience to make art for. After the opening night, I did an interview with the pittsburgh orbit: https://pittsburghorbit.com/2022/08/18/the-blight-stuff-nathan-van-patters-bound-by-blight/ Really well written- and…

Hi! Thanks for coming to my site- here is how to sign up for my email list: https://mailchi.mp/5099984c2054/nathans-art

I made this as a way to counterbalance the doom and gloom. It’s a (obviously) a wooden ship with trees in place of sails. The trees are modeled after local trees in bloom. I wanted to counterbalance some of the darkness of the show and create something really fun. Also, I got a high temp…

This took a long, long time. It’s the 40th painting for my show, and it’s more sculptural than almost all the projects I’ve had (except for, of course, the sculptures). Obviously, it’s a day and night clock. The night side is supposed to look precipitous, crowded, and enormous. I did General Braddock Towers twice to…

North Braddock Sky #1 (Jumbled Sky) and North Braddock Sky #2 (Cracked Sky). I’m pretty proud of how these turned out. The first one feels better after having mad the second one. I wasn’t looking at the first one when I made the second, and when I finished the second I realized that both benefit…

This week I went to see the Maxo Vanka Murals again, and I realized how much my art has become trying to reverse engineer the experience of seeing the inside of that church. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Maxo Vanka was humanist Croatian artist who, in the 1930s, painted religious art in a…

This painting turned out really well- I did in on commission for a new friend. It was great to work on a commission about Braddock. This is one of the strongest mostly paint paintings I’ve made in the recent years. While the physical objects are used, the vegetables and green space is all paint. I…

Techniques I finished this recently while working on another, more complex commission. I used dried paint I had collected for the last few years and cut and glued it to the house, creating the overgrown effect. I don’t know how to get more dried paint, though. The texture was created from it drying over time…

It took three ish months ( I think) to complete this. The goal was to make a space that draws the viewer in. Both of the tables are mostly 3 dimensional, matching the perspective of the two dimensional space. The illusion creates a felt depth that gives the viewer room to feel like they could…