Paintings & Prints featured in the Grand Opening of the Samuel Owen Gallery in MARFA Texas! May 1-6, 2008

ABOUT MARFA

Marfa was settled in the mid 19th century by two distinct groups: Primarily Anglo-European families started to homestead the area by using the town as a source of supplies and social life and the Mexican families who began to migrate northward to the growing settlement. Both groups can attribute their families back three or four generations.

Marfa now has a population of around 2400. The largest employers are the Border Patrol, the U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization and U.S. Customs. As Marfa is the seat of government for Presidio County, a significant number of residents are employed through the county offices.

Events that led to the cultural and economic growth that Marfa now enjoys started with Judd's investment in art and people back in the 1970's. With the purchase of much of Fort D.A. Russell, Donald Judd began the work on his permanent sculptural installations. A noticable amount of revitalization came from his activities and continued up until his death in 1994. The Chinati Foundation was established as guardian of his artworks and the museum. The foundation continues his vision as well as attracting thousand of visitors each year to Marfa.

Today, Marfa enjoys an international reputation in the art world and still remains a simple and modest place to live.

A selection of Typographic Nudes

With the Typographic Nude paintings, edges of shapes and colors define each other! The edges control the composition, like external expectations and demands control us. These expectations are often sensual and pleasing, making one feel accepted and comfortable. In the end, all these edges/expectations are doing is holding us in place, at arms length!

A selection of Typographic Landscapes

With the Typographic Landscape paintings, empty spaces are defined by the edges of shapes and colors. The spaces obscure and control the composition, like external and internal expectations control and obscure our true voice. This confusion or compression between external and internal expectations often leaves us with no voice – just noise.

A selection of Typographic Voids

With the Typographic Void Paintings, the empty spaces define the composition. Like silent pauses in conversations, these spaces hold the tension and meaning in the composition. The edges of the fragmented typography are punctuations of our self-conscious language that diffuse our true voice – look for what is not said to see the true message.

Typographic Landscape appears in "Vermont Magazine", July/August 2008

Working in my old Yale & Towne Studio

I used this space, that over looked the City of Stamford, from June 2006 through to October 2007.

I miss watching the setting sun reflected in the building of Stamford and how the rain sounded in the afternoon as I painted.

Biography

Nat Connacher is a painter, photographer and designer creating visual expressions of what he sees and feels around him.

Nat’s painting was selected for inclusion in the 2007 Stamford Art Association, 27^th Annual Faber Birren Color show, where he was awarded the Faber Birren Color Award. In 2005 & 2006 his paintings where included in the Silvermine Guild Arts Center’s 56^th & 57^th Annual Art of the Northeast exhibitions. In the 2006 Art in the Northeast Exhibition he received the Mary Vann Hughs Award. Nat is also an avid fine art photographer. His photographs have been accepted for display in the Stamford (CT) Art in Public Places exhibits, “Celebrating Women”, Summer 2004 and “Color/Forms”, Summer 2005 and are in a number of corporate collections.

Nat is president and creative director of Connacher Design where he combines his different artistic interests to develop visual dialogues between his clients and their audiences. His areas of expertise are corporate identity, branding and visual information design for print and the Internet.

Nat holds a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Yale University and a Bachelor of Design in Communication Design from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

A native of Canada, Nat resides in Stamford, CT with his family.

Artist Statement

The liberation of letterforms from their recognized social function is the foundation for my abstract paintings. The new forms I create, allow me to explore the conflict between external and internal expectations in our personal lives. By painting bold, large, graphic, simple and colorful abstractions of letterforms, I highlight the boundaries that shape our feelings, self-image, and our relationship with the world.

These abstractions are a metaphor for our human landscape. The shapes and edges are expressions of vulnerability and pain in the search for intimacy.

We are all trying to discover who we are in a society that projects personal success in terms of position, wealth and looks. In reality, those things have nothing to do with who we are or want to be. It is in those moments of tension against what is told to us and what we know is true that I find the inspiration for what I do.  

First Art Showing

Stamford Loft Artists November 2005

What a wonderful experience, scary but wonderful! For the first time it was Ok to be vulnerable! I loved the feedback, positive or negative. It was great to watch people come into the gallery and do a double take, some stayed, some left! Some did not understood what I was doing but I always got a reaction!