Nathan Budoff | Showcase Guide

"Outcry started with the lion-headed figure on the right side of the image. Sometimes an image like this one just comes into my mind fully formed. The challenge can be to give it physical shape, as there is a distance between the imagining and the realization—often I realize how many details I did not see clearly in the imagined version as I try to develop it into a drawing or painting. In this piece, the combination of an animal head and a human figure was something new for me; I have often included small human figures in my recent work, but haven’t combined species, and yet in this instance it feels relevant, even urgent. The outcry is a shared fury at the state of things, at the degradation of the environment, at the threats to other species, and the world with fewer creatures that we are compelled to live in. It is also an image that seems familiar to us, something springing from comics and the world of superheroes. In this work this lonely outcry becomes a chorus: two wolves howl their protest on the left of the canvas, and a sperm whale joins the outcry as it swims toward the protagonist. They scream as around them an array of small orange mice go on about life, and a swarm of fish circle behind the largest whale; two large whales look on, and the memory of a whale, portrayed as a silhouette in white, lingers in the background. In this work, as in all of my pieces, the design of the visual space and color selection are carefully considered and are important factors in making the work more effective," Nathan Budoff.

"The landscape in the background of Blood Red was drawn in shellac ink from the balcony of my studio in San Juan. I feel it is important to work from observation, and I enjoy the challenge and curiosity. I worked in red both for the visual drama of the piece and to imply the passion and violence underlying cities, among them this city. The predator-prey relationship is at the center of this piece. The meerkats are here as playful representatives of humanity, as fragile yet clever creatures, as well as being themselves the attentive nervous creatures that they are, nervous and sneaky possible prey. And the protagonists are the orca, presented for their strange balance of cuteness and brutality. The main orca is portrayed almost as a caricature, and yet with the open mouth of their brutal predation. Orca are brilliant and cultured animals, inventive in their social behavior and their techniques of hunting, and each band has its own particular behavior. In these subtle manners, this painting projects aspects of predation and a possible history of violence," Nathan Budoff.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Nathan Budoff has developed his art and his career in the vital and passionate art community of San Juan, Puerto Rico. His recent work imagines the relationship between space, people, flora, and fauna. After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Budoff received a Fulbright Fellowship, and on completing this year-long grant, he established himself in Puerto Rico.

 

Budoff recently finished a large mural project, Entre Mar y Tierra, on the four sides of a pyramid in Cataño, across the bay from Old San Juan. Budoff created a 42-foot diameter mosaic, Con las Cotorras, on the ceiling of the Martínez Nadal Station of the San Juan metro as part of the Puerto Rico Public Art Program. He has developed murals with students from the Escuela de Arte de Antioquía in Medellín, Colombia, the Youth Development Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. His artist residencies include the Ucross Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the American Academy in Rome, and the Faculty Resource Network at New York University.

 

His work has been included repeatedly in the Certamen Nacional at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, the Muestra Nacional at the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, and the International Drawing Biennial in Tijuana, Mexico. He has exhibited individually at the Museo de Arte y Diseño de Miramar (MADMi), Galería Botello, Galería Viota, Galería 356, Petrus Gallery, Recinto Cerra,  and Artlab in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the University of Vermont Gallery, Henao Cultural Center in Orlando and the Duluth Center for the Arts, as well as in collectives at the Hole in New York, 516 Arts in Albuquerque, the Centro Colombo Americano in Bogotá and Medellín and Tansey Contemporary and Red Dot Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, among others. He has taught at several universities in Puerto Rico and (for shorter periods) Minnesota, Colombia, and New Mexico. His work is in the public collections of Rollins Museum of Art, the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, the Museo de Arte de Ponce, and the Museo de Arte de Caguas as well as the Catherine T. and John D. MacArthur Foundation, the Boston Public Library, and the New York Public Library.