Nathan Budoff | Showcase Guide

  • Nathan Budoff at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art

    Nathan Budoff | Show Statements

    Nathan Budoff & Spencer Linford
    Read show statements about Nathan Budoff's inaugural showcase with Zane Bennett Contemporary Art.
  • Featured Artworks

  • Nathan Budoff at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art
    Water Watcher, 2015. Charcoal, shellac ink on canvas. 41 x 28 in

    Water Watcher

    2015
    "Water Watcher is one of the first pieces in this showcase and focuses on a carefully rendered meerkat and its relationship to a fish. For me, the meerkat became very intriguing as I accompanied my mother during the last year of her life. She was defiantly independent, in great shape, and walked every day until her mid-seventies. She became frailer and was eventually diagnosed with multiple myeloma. After some initial treatment, she was bedridden in her home, with hospice care and private nurses. She had always been a very busy and ambitious woman, and for several months, she decided it was a good time to watch television. Mostly, she watched the Nature channel, and her favorite show was "Meerkat Manor," which replayed several times a day. She loved the drama of the meerkats. It made me look more closely at them, and it is something that I associate with the prairie dogs of Santa Fe, who seem to behave in much the same way, even though they are not as elegant and dramatic as the meerkats. I am intrigued by their vigilance, constant observation, and the way it implies that they can see beyond their surroundings, observing the creatures around them, the threats and movements, the rivers and the ocean, and the luminous fish glowing on the canvas," Nathan Budoff.
  • Nathan Budoff at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art
    Outcry, 2024. Oil, acrylic, charcoal, shellac ink on canvas. 35 x 57 in

    Outcry

    "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.
  • Nathan Budoff at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art
    Dance Challenge, 2022. Oil, charcoal, shellac ink on cloth. 32 x 48 in

    Dance Challenge

    "Dance Challenge is the first in a series designed to draw different beings into closer, active relationships: a whale and a bee dancing together. With this development, the work is not just portraying all of us, all of life on the planet, in a single community, while we function in our respective webs of activity, but that we are actually engaged in different dances as we live our lives. This symbiosis, or interdependence, is deliberately extreme, deliberately exaggerated, to make a point about our relation, and also to laugh about the wonder and humor of life in time and space. That is why the creatures are so different in size, in the real world, and live in different spaces (air and water), but still live together, and even dance together, the whales hanging vertically in the water, the bees dancing to describe the location of food. The shimmering cloth that is the ground for this piece adds a magical quality to the scene, with hints of gold glimmering. And the hot pink crows that populate the space, with one small woman hiding among them, further energize the pictorial space," Nathan Budoff.

  • Nathan Budoff at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art
    Blood Red, 2024. Oil, charcoal, shellac ink on canvas. 24 x 40 in

    Blood Red

    "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.
  • All Artworks

    • Nathan Budoff, Do Mice Dream of Seahorses?, 2022
      Nathan Budoff, Do Mice Dream of Seahorses?, 2022
      $ 9,200.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Junte, 2023
      Nathan Budoff, Junte, 2023
      $ 10,400.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Ojo!, 2020
      Nathan Budoff, Ojo!, 2020
      $ 8,800.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Water Watcher, 2015
      Nathan Budoff, Water Watcher, 2015
      $ 8,800.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Buscando Aire, 2018-2021
      Nathan Budoff, Buscando Aire, 2018-2021
      $ 18,500.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Custodians, 2023
      Nathan Budoff, Custodians, 2023
      $ 15,200.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Even the Smallest Among Us, 2021
      Nathan Budoff, Even the Smallest Among Us, 2021
      $ 14,200.00
    • Nathan Budoff, In the Night Forest, 2020
      Nathan Budoff, In the Night Forest, 2020
      $ 13,600.00
    • Nathan Budoff, La Fuga, 2020
      Nathan Budoff, La Fuga, 2020
      $ 16,500.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Like Stars in the Sky, 2024
      Nathan Budoff, Like Stars in the Sky, 2024
      $ 13,800.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Unusual Bird, 2024
      Nathan Budoff, Unusual Bird, 2024
      $ 12,400.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Lightness, 2022
      Nathan Budoff, Lightness, 2022
      $ 12,800.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Migration, 2012
      Nathan Budoff, Migration, 2012
      $ 20,800.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Temporal, 2018
      Nathan Budoff, Temporal, 2018
      $ 16,500.00
    • Nathan Budoff, My Aerie, 2021
      Nathan Budoff, My Aerie, 2021
      $ 12,400.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Under the Wings, 2022
      Nathan Budoff, Under the Wings, 2022
      $ 15,400.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Aquarium, 2024
      Nathan Budoff, Aquarium, 2024
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Bunny Outside, 2017
      Nathan Budoff, Bunny Outside, 2017
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Dance Challenge II, 2022
      Nathan Budoff, Dance Challenge II, 2022
      $ 275.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Dancing by the Whale, 2021
      Nathan Budoff, Dancing by the Whale, 2021
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Forest Shrimp, 2019
      Nathan Budoff, Forest Shrimp, 2019
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Forest Squid, 2018
      Nathan Budoff, Forest Squid, 2018
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, From Above with Sharks, 2020
      Nathan Budoff, From Above with Sharks, 2020
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Swimming in the Trees, 2017
      Nathan Budoff, Swimming in the Trees, 2017
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Tall Red Friends, 2022
      Nathan Budoff, Tall Red Friends, 2022
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Temporal (Naked Tree), 2018
      Nathan Budoff, Temporal (Naked Tree), 2018
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Verticle Dance, 2024
      Nathan Budoff, Verticle Dance, 2024
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Wise Eyes, 2017
      Nathan Budoff, Wise Eyes, 2017
      $ 950.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Dance Challenge, 2022
      Nathan Budoff, Dance Challenge, 2022
      $ 7,000.00
    • Nathan Budoff, Blood Red, 2024
      Nathan Budoff, Blood Red, 2024
      $ 6,400.00
  • About the Artist

  • Nathan Budoff at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art

    Biography

    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.

  • Credits

    Curatorial by Sandra Zane & Nathan Budoff with contributions from Brad Hart and Christina Ziegler Campbell. Installation by Brad Hart and Christina Ziegler Campbell. Photography by Marylene Mey, Byron Flesher, and Nathan Budoff. Words by Nathan Budoff and Spencer Linford.