Nathan Ethier

My work deals with time, color, light, pattern, and human touch. I’ve long thought of pattern and pattern making as means to create something visually regenerative, or a sort of visual perpetual motion machine. The resulting painting, with all its accreted and organized marks being the visual record of the meditation that is found in the process. I see repetition and consistency of touch as a method to transmit care, and a sense of care, to whomever is receptive enough to receive it. The goal is to send these transmissions out as far and wide as possible. The illusion of projected light conveyed in my pictures gives each one of them a sense of life, action, and exuberant coexistence with the viewer.

Produced entirely without the use of a computer of any kind, these works are made exclusively with acrylic paint and maintain a thin surface. The palettes I’ve chosen for these paintings tend to rely on the interplay between earthier, darkened, and muted tones along with their prismatic counterparts. These relationships establish a graphic immediacy; inviting the viewer for further engagement with the work itself.

The compositions of these pictures are simultaneously “all over”, and not. The collections of illuminated shapes seem to disrupt the underlying grid; however, they depend on its very structure to exist as part of the image. These paintings are hard edge and soft edge, all at once.

Inspiration for the shapes and motifs at play in this work came from the dappling effect of sunlight through forest canopies, stained glass arrangements, mycology, sun angle charts, wind patterns, bird murmuration, the Moon, concert lighting, botanical order, loud music on a clear day, and surely many other subconscious interventions.

Nate Ethier’s work has been exhibited at Auxier/Kline, NY; Danese/Corey, NY; LMAKgallery, NY; Minus Space, NY; Geoffery Young Gallery, MA; Nancy Margois Gallery, NY; The Boiler/Pierogi Gallery, NY; Morgan Lehman Gallery, NY; and at institutes such as the Susquehanna Art Museum, PA; Boston University, MA; Georgia Southern Univeristy, GA. He is a recipient of a Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Award and was a nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. His work has been reviewed in such publications as the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, the Boston Globe, and the Providence Journal. Ethier is originally from Providence, Rhode Island, and currently lives and works in New York City.