Nathan Ritterpusch

Gallery Affiliations: Rare

Region: Northeast

As a painter I'm interested in telling stories. I enjoy crafting tales that strike a precarious balance between what is stated or revealed and what is left open. These narratives can exist on a single canvas or be played out through an entire series. I think of my paintings as psychologically charged images pregnant with personal meaning, speaking on themes paradoxically intimate and universal. At their most successful they behave like dreams, folding back on themselves and collapsing while picking up new threads that defy terrestrial explanation.

My most recent group of images is from an upcoming series entitled "Delirium," which represents a continuation from previous exhibitions "Can You Hear Me Too" and "The Space Between." They are an exploration of people under duress. Through ambiguous and enigmatic situations, desire and anxiety materialize to form these esoteric, hallucinatory spaces.

A complex painting strategy is used to achieve these altered states. Multiple paint "languages" simultaneously exist on a single canvas. The unusual use of pattern, collage, overlapping, and smudging function to visually transport the viewer through these distorted planes.