Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Nathaniel Mary Quinn creates composite portraits from personal and found sources, exploring the connection between visual memory and perception. Using fragments from online sources, fashion magazines, and family photos, he constructs hybrid faces and figures that blend neo-Dadaism with realism, capturing the intimacy and intensity of face-to-face encounters.

Biography of Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Nathaniel Mary Quinn's passion for drawing started during his youth on Chicago's South Side. He was awarded a scholarship to Culver Academies boarding school in Indiana in ninth grade, but soon after arriving, he received news of his mother's sudden passing. Returning to Chicago the following month, he discovered his father and brothers had left their childhood home without a trace.

This profound experience fueled Quinn's artistic drive. He dedicated himself to education, adding his mother's name, Mary, to his own so it would be on all his degrees. He earned a BA in art and psychology from Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 2000, and an MFA from New York University in 2002.

Upon completing his MFA, Quinn relocated to Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, where he continued painting while teaching at-risk youth. In 2013, a student's mother invited him to exhibit five works at her home art salon. However, on the opening day, he only had four pieces ready. Thinking on his feet, Quinn started painting a hazy recollection from his past, assembling fragments from his subconscious. Stepping back, he suddenly recognized his brother Charles' mouth in the composition. This marked Quinn's development of a new technique that would draw wide attention to his work.

Shortly after, the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn encountered the painting "Charles." Impressed, in August 2013, five additional paintings by Quinn, created in a similar style, were showcased in the museum's windows. The same year, artist and professor William Villalongo featured Quinn's work in a group exhibition titled "American Beauty" at Susan Inglett Gallery in New York.

Quinn's inaugural solo museum exhibition, "This Is Life," was displayed at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin from December 2018 to March 2019.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn's Art Style

Since his painting "Charles," Nathaniel Mary Quinn has refined a process by gathering images from mass media that resonate with him, stripping away their original cultural context to repurpose them purely for their aesthetic value. In his studio, he transforms these visual fragments into tangible representations of imagined memories from his past and present.

Using oil paint, charcoal, gouache, oil stick, and pastel, Quinn meticulously reconstructs details and facial features from these found images, often covering parts of the composition as he progresses. Through this adaptation of collage into a cohesive, painterly form, Quinn suggests that multiplicity is a timeless rather than a fleeting state.