If a figure doesn't look back at you, you forget it.

- Nathan Oliveira

See the first stroke as a start and everything after that a recovery.

- Nathan Oliveira

I had the desire to paint the figure without actually painting the figure.

- Nathan Oliveira

The gesture must be correct. If the gesture is correct, your mind really creates the reality of the figure, and it is not necessary to hang on all th…

- Nathan Oliveira

For me, painting is that magical material, that beautiful stuff that was invented, the ground-up pigments in oil which makes it very malleable. It ca…

- Nathan Oliveira

What I'm concerned about now is creating a metaphor for what the figure really is.

- Nathan Oliveira

Though I have considerable interest in Europe and in traveling, I am most content with simply working and allowing the world that I'm creating to unf…

- Nathan Oliveira

I am not the avant-garde. I am the artist who comes after the advancing guard. I am more concerned with continuity of ideas and tradition than in inv…

- Nathan Oliveira