NATHANIEL MARY QUINN

Early Years

Raised in Chicago‘s Robert Taylor Homes, Quinn’s upbringing was marked by the precarity of public housing and the ruptures of personal tragedy. His mother’s sudden death during his teens led him to formally adopt her name, a tribute evident in every signature. Following abandonment by his father and siblings, Quinn channelled pain and resilience into his artistic practice while earning a BA from Wabash College and an MFA from New York University before settling in New York.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn Artworks

Quinn is known for fractured, illusionistic portraits constructed entirely by hand in oil, gouache, charcoal, pastel, and gold leaf—not digital collage as they are often mistaken for. His breakthrough painting Charles (2013) initiated his distinctive approach. In interviews, he has explained these early works as coming from a need to create a composite; to evoke the fragmented way we remember people, in his case, those he lost or who abandoned him. Each face is built from visual fragments—magazine clippings, family photos, and found images—melded into a singular, psychologically charged identity.

Subsequent works such as The Comedian (2017) and Preciate It, Unk! (2018) expand this method, blending personal narrative with broader reflection on American society, gentrification, and race, as noted in The New Yorker‘s analysis of his ‘confrontations of beauty, violence, and memory’.

Echoes from Copeland: New Work at Gagosian (2025)

For ECHOES FROM COPELAND at Gagosian, New York (10 September–25 October 2025), Quinn’s practice took a significant turn: inspired by Alice Walker’s novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland, these new works delve into intergenerational struggle, hope, and healing. Quinn employs what he calls ‘paint-drawing’, integrating intricate linear mark-making with richly coloured backgrounds to anchor his figures in layered, narrative environments. Painterly references to both his childhood and Walker’s characters infuse these works with ‘a mutual relationship between the acceptable and the unacceptable, the grotesque and what is aesthetically pleasing’.

Discussing his work in Ocula Magazine, Quinn describes this body of work as a leap into the unfamiliar, noting that whilst it was initially hard work to embark on a new approach, ultimately he was grateful for the freedom it afforded him. New paintings including Study for Grange Copeland (2025) and Study for The Traveler (2024) demonstrate this shift with vivid, unresolved narratives embedded in contemporary portraiture.

Select Awards and Accolades

• Quinn’s work is held in public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Hammer Museum, and Museo Jumex.
• Named recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Artistic, Performance, and Fine Arts Award and two-time winner of the National Arts Club Prize.

Select Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

• ECHOES FROM COPELAND, Gagosian, New York (2025)
• Split Face, Museo Novecento, Florence (2023)
• SCENES, Almine Rech, London (2022)
• In the Valley, Almine Rech, Aspen (2021)
• Gagosian, London (2020)
• Always Felt, Rarely Seen, Almine Rech, Brussels (2019)
• This Is Life, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin (2018)

Group Exhibitions

• Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020)
• Dirty Protest, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019)
• Echoes: Identity and Politics in Contemporary Collage, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2018)
• Hope and Hazard: A Comedy of Eros, Hall Art Foundation, Vermont (2017)

Nathaniel Mary Quinn FAQs

Anna Dickie | Ocula | 2025