Nathan Allen Wilkinson is a Fine Arts At WWU with concentrations in mixed-media and photography.
Technological advancements have led us to a time of photographic-saturation. More people than ever before can capture moments with fantastic quality. The accessibility and ease of taking photographs continue the dialogue of the medium’s artistic value. My multi-media practice explores relationships between drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, and the intersectionality of documentation and fine art.
Photography transcribes my perception of the world. The images place equal importance on composition, lighting, and capturing the world from an existentialist lens. Using digital software, I modify images as if painting on top of them to connect photography and painting directly. Approaching photography with painterly qualities in mind blurs the line between documentation and fine art. My drawings and paintings reference photography to recognize its artistic value and emphasizes how mediums are interlinked. I create abstract and expressive portraits, primarily using acrylic paint and charcoal, by layering mark-making. Translating photos into drawings and paintings analyzes relationships between mediums, cameras, and the artist.
Events from my childhood molded me into an observer, preferring to watch and analyze people rather than interact with them. An immense amount of my inspiration comes from Existentialism and observing human action and behavior. Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and the Renaissance influence the concepts and imagery of the work. Francis Bacon’s artistic practice, life experience, and view of human existence significantly impact how I construct images and perceive the human body and the essence of being. Literature by Aldous Huxley, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Orwell, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Kurt Vonnegut also influence my photographs’ content. Photographers Catherine Opie and Cindy Sherman influence my exploration of using photos to blend documentation with fine art. Together, these influences drive me to create work that tethers mediums and documents the world’s complexity through an artistic lens.
Artist Biography:
Nathan Allen Wilkinson was born in Peoria, Arizona, in 1999. He gained an interest in photography at the age of 13, began studying black and white film photo at the Metropolitan Art Institute during his junior and senior years of high school, and accepted into Western’s Fine and Performing Art Department in February 2019. Wilkinson is currently a junior, majoring in Studio Art with concentrations in mixed-media and photography. He is the recipient of the Skipping Stone Scholarship for Photography (2020), the Oscar Edwin Olson Arts Scholarship (2020), an International Study Scholarship (2019) from Western Washington University, the Western Award for Excellence (2018), and the Metropolitan Arts Institute Senior Visual Arts Award (2018). Nathan has been a competitive juror of the in-site: A New Realism exhibition for the Art Drop Mini Award (2020) and a featured artist interviewed on WWU’s PHLOG (2020).