Nathan Oliveira quotes:

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

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 unfold before my eyes.

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 the rest [of the details]...

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

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 inventing a unique imagery.

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.

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

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