XL Cover Story: The Next Next Wave

Nathan Green: Painter, 25

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Dec. 1, 2005

Ricardo B. Brazziell/AA-S
The Next Next Wave
Reginald Harris	René Pinnell
Myrna Cabello	Justin Raiford
Attic Ted	Leah Marino
Wendy Colonna	Nathan Green

"I was terrified of falling into a slump," says the lanky 25-year-old, who spiced up his coming-of-age years in suburban Houston by surreptitiously covering whatever he could with graffiti (train cars were favorites).

After cobbling together just enough part-time jobs as an exhibit installer at several Austin museums to sustain him, he rented a studio in a warehouse with several other artists. And he spent as much time there as he could.

"Being around like-minded artists keeps me going," he says. And it keeps up the fun.

It also proved fortuitous.

At one of the informal parties Green and his studio-mates threw last summer, Arturo Palacios, the force behind the East Austin gallery Art Palace, spotted Green's work. He offered Green something most artists struggle years to snag: a solo exhibit.

Green threw himself into the challenge. Using torn-up drawings and ordinary house paint, he produced a series of colorful abstract collages, an artistic riff on the ever-growing suburbs he's watched expand on his drives between Houston and Austin. "I got interested in dispelling the myth of the endless frontier," he says. Part landscapes and part topographical charts, Green's collage paintings seem at first all about craft and whimsy. But then, after deeper looking, they project tremendous poignancy.

All the artist could think about when it came to his first solo exhibit, however, was making his world look as beautiful as it could. Hence Green was as surprised as anyone when his exhibit sold out. Every single painting was snapped up, almost half just at the opening party in the mid-September.

"It was a whirlwind," he says of the experience. "I really didn't expect to do so well."

A place in the limelight has left the soft-spoken Green a bit breathless. After all, one of his true passions is "just putting beautiful things in public, anonymously." During college he was part of the super-secret Food Crew, a trio of UT art students who plastered Central Austin with their colorful silkscreen images of food (a pork chop, a slice of cake, a hunk of cheese), delighting street art aficionados and igniting buzz with their anonymity.

Green still plans to keep placing beauty in the world; it's just that now collectors look for his named attached to it.