Let It Loose

Our hero artists’ images haunt our dreams.  Artists all spend many years processing our teachers’ voices.  We strive for greatness, and utilize the tools of criticism we have gathered throughout the years of schooling or apprenticeship to construct each work of art. 

Our own personal arsenal of expectations — grand goals, insecurities, and in time personal criteria — sifts through the voices of our elders.  Eventually, just as in any difficult profession, we get to the point where we have worked hard and long enough, so that we can finally let go of all judgments that came before.  The simple practice of being in the studio and painting becomes such a rich habit that we no longer have to compare and contrast in order to determine the success of a work of art.  All that we have looked at and thought about and painted comes through the facile brush without any hesitation.  We simply make things in order to see them…experience them.  This new body of work by Nathan Naetzker is a perfect example of this beautiful autonomy.

Naetzker is well known for his formal landscapes and portraits, painted in the formal tradition taught at the New York Academy of Art, where he received his MFA. His paintings of rural western New York natural environs are reminiscent of the intimacy of Albert Pinkham Ryder and the air and color of George Inness.  His portraits are intimate views informed by the awkward shared living room of cyberspace.

This new body of work brings his many years of narrative description forward, unlocks it, and lets it loose.  These paintings are free from formal narrative and polish.  Informed by his love for abstraction, a lifetime of wandering through forests and pastures, and a love for music, this work lets the brush and paint gracefully do the talking.  Each piece is its own improvisation, each piece of paint a response to the marks and color already laid down on the paper or canvas.

Naetzker’s decision to “loosen up” was enhanced by returning to watercolors.  A medium that begs for spills and pools, it also allows for quick, energetic experiments in color.  Surprising and refreshing experiments they are.  Freedom embodied, all those years of experience, unconsciously flowing from the artist.  Lyrically, some of the patterns and movements in the small watercolors seem to describe the movement of shadows in a forest.  Others are simply about playing with the plastic movement of space.  Sharp to rough, bright to dark, he is clearly playing with the spatial tensions that defined Hans Hofmann’s lifework, work that Naetzker confesses to love.

The large oil paintings also let go of traditional ties.  A large seascape disintegrates through the center as Naetzker paints out the void.   He stares “into the abyss, waiting for something to come out of it” as he brushes out most of the detail.  “You’re not sure where you’re going, you make discoveries along the way.”  Indeed, a painting of tree branches becomes all about surface as he explores the brush strokes that make up the spaces in between. 

These paintings are in fact about the joy and innovation embodied in each piece. Effortless crisscrosses and layering create complex visual games that quite simply are a delight to look at.  Spills and scratches made without the use of the brush press at the edges of the paper, inviting your eye to dance.  These fresh, raw, direct paintings allow the viewer as well, to simply and happily, let it loose. 

A nice essay I wrote on the occasion of an exhibition by Nathan Naetzker at Artspace.

— Cynnie Gaasch