Nathan Cain | artist

i work with oil paints, mostly, and tend toward one style for portraits and another style for landscapes. i want my portraits to have an expressive style with a somewhat unfinished nature. if i get too realistic then i feel like i’ve painted something that would have been better produced by snapping a photo of the model. whereas if the viewer sees individual brushstrokes, unexpected skin tones, and unrealistic areas such as incomplete edges or even flat areas where you would expect volume, then the painting can elicit emotions that a realistic snapshot cannot. for my landscapes, my style tends toward impressionism, still shying away from realism because “why not just take a photo?”. i enjoy working quickly with this style and love the magic moment that happens when i step back from something i’ve been working on up close for a while and my heart starts to beat faster when i see that my abstract markings have turned into… an impression of a landscape… art!