Nathan Oliveira Interview

I interviewed Nathan Oliveira in 2000, or thereabouts. Here are some excerpts.

As one works as an artist, you have to simply wait. If you wait long enough, and if you are serious enough about what you are doing, in a sense you will know what you are going to have to do. Like wings.

 In 1956 I made a picture of a raptor, a hawk. In the early 1970s a graduate student brought in a stuffed hawk that they were throwing away at the museum at Stanford. I proceeded to paint about that. About two hundred small little paintings of this bird. It was just an interesting, beautiful subject to me then. Over time, painting this bird, and painting figures, the university changed my studio from downtown to an abandoned laboratory. When I arrived there, there were a number of kestrels -- sparrow hawks -- in the rafters. The first time I went into the studio, there was a dead kestrel sitting on the porch. I painted it. In a huge building attached to my studio, like an airplane hanger, and here were all these kestrels nesting in the rafters. Fifty feet up. They came in from the foothills. The connection was wonderful. There was an ongoing connection with raptors.

 One day I was painting in the studio and suddenly, over my shoulder came this kestrel. It had come in through a hole. He flew down and landed right in front of me. A most beautiful little falcon. This allowed me to get very close and see how exotic this beautiful little creature is.

 And then I started toying with the idea of painting these birds more seriously. At that time I was walking with my wife in the foothills. A three mile loop. And there they were, hovering in the fields. And not only were they hovering in the fields, and flying and darting, and doing all the things that they did, but above them were these great red-tailed hawks that were up so high.

 As I continued to walk, I developed a kind of distant dialogue with them. They never really landed on the ground. They would be in a high tower or a high tree. They encountered the earth only when they were hungry. I began to wonder how beautiful that was. How wonderful that could be. Why couldn't I fly? I would love to fly like that.

 And so I began to toy with the idea of painting a huge wing. If I can't fly with them, I can paint. I can wear them in my head. I began to paint as large a wing as I could. That had something to do with the length of the bedroom I had — sixteen feet long. The idea kept nurturing itself. You paint when you are moved to paint. If you paint for its own sake, it is brittle and decorative and unnecessary. A pastime.

 The first wing I painted was too much like a wing. It wasn't the symbol I was searching for. So I kept abstracting this. I was painting good paintings, but it wasn't what I had in my mind. I hung three sixteen foot paintings side by side on the wall of this big studio I had. I began to see the huge arch, the leading edge of the wing, the curve that represents lift. That became an abstraction of the wing. The ultimate abstraction of the wing. So I began to work with that. I began to come to some conclusion.

 I have spent my whole life trying to discover what I am supposed to paint. This is the only thing I can come up with. Intuition and instincts are so powerful, and such a great part of our intelligence. Somehow our society and our world doesn't really trust imagining. The truly brilliant people I know are people that understand their instincts and their intuition. To trust it solely sometimes is impossible. It takes a long time to get there. So I think you have a better chance as an older artist than as a younger artist.

 . . .

Below, Nathan Oliveira paintings I find particularly inspirational. They aren’t “pretty paintings” but they expand our imagination and horizons.