It’s Day 232 and I didn’t start painting until this evening.  I also wasn’t sure what artist I was going to pay tribute to.  I have a large list and a bunch I know I want to do, but then I found this artist and fell in love with his watercolors and paintings in general.  I’ve been really wanting to experiment with watercolors so I decided to honor Nathan Oliveira today!

Nathan Oliveira (December 19, 1928 – November 13, 2010) was an American painter,

printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese parents.

Since the late 1950s Oliveira has been the subject of nearly one hundred solo exhibitions in addition to having been included hundreds of group exhibitions, in important museums and

galleries worldwide. He taught studio art for several decades in California beginning in the early 1950s when he taught at the California College of the Arts (formerly California College of Arts and Crafts) in Oakland.

Then, after serving as a visiting artist at several universities, he became a Professor of Studio Art at Stanford University.

In 1999 Nathan Oliveira was awarded the Distinguished Degree of “Commander” in “The Order of the Infante D. Henrique,” awarded by the President of Portugal and the Portuguese government, for his artistic and cultural achievements.

In 2002 “The Art of Nathan Oliveira,” a major traveling retrospective of Oliveira’s work, organized by

the San Jose Museum of art, and guest curated by Peter Selz opened. The exhibition was accompanied by a monograph, “Nathan Oliveira,” by Peter Selz with an introduction by Susan Landauer and essay by Joann Moser, published by the University of California Press.

Oliveira graduated from San Francisco’s George Washington High School. He studied at the California College of the Arts in Oakland where he earned a BFA in 1951 and an MFA in 1952. While attending CCAC he took an eight-week summer course in painting at Mills College taught by the German Expressionist Max Beckmann.

After graduation Oliveira taught art at several colleges, including the California College of the Arts, The California School of Fine Arts (now The San Francisco Art Institute) The University of Chicago, UCLA and Stanford University.

• 

  1952–53 Printmaking Instructor, The California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA

• 1952-53 Watercolor Instructor, California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA
• 1955–56 Chair of Graphic Arts, California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA
• 1961-62 Visiting Professor in Painting, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
• 1962-63 Visiting Professor in Studio Art, University of California, Los Angeles, CA
• 1963-64 Visiting Professor in Studio Art, Cornell University, Ithica, NY
• 1964–96 Professor of Studio Arts, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

During his Stanford years Oliveira held summer positions as a visiting artist in Colorado

and Hawaii. Nathan Oliveira also served as a member of the Honorary Board of Humane Society Silicon Valley in Milpitas, California from 2007 until his death in 2010.

Biography is from wikipedia.

“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 can be manipulated and changed, darkened, lightened, given different hues and colors, so that by manipulating this material somehow I can find that figure I’m looking for, that figure that represents all the issues I’m bringing up and addressing.”- Nathan Oliveira

I hope you enjoy my piece today!  I really enjoyed creating it.  I will see you tomorrow on Day 233!

Best, Linda