Nathan’s artistic aspirations first showed themselves in the classroom: a self-described “doodler,” moments of boredom became sketches and designs in notebook margins. After spending his high school years in Nevada, he migrated South to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design to become a traditional portrait artist. As his current work boldly exhibits, Nathan instead decided to take his art in a unique, wholly personalized, direction. This ability to create both conventional and alternative realities allows him to push and pull his work from the realistic to the abstract with imaginative skill.
His fanciful, often abstract, subjects share an organic connection with his informal school-day sketching. Despite his uncanny subjects, his paint application is studious and technically informed. How he paints, he says, is more important than what he paints. The relation of emotions to brushstrokes is keen: anger will produce a harsher, quicker stroke than a feeling of calm or contentment. Durfee likes to get his work done in as few sittings as possible, for the less time there is between work periods, the less likely emotions and brushstrokes will vary.
"I’m always amazed by Durfee’s limitless imagination. Each new group of paintings transports me into another reality. As an artist, he’s got it all; unbelievable technical skills, a unique approach in his application of paint, and his inexhaustible creativity."