The Baseball Paintings of Nathan Mullins
The Baseball Paintings of Nathan Mullins
By Nathan Mullins
Artist Statement
Still images from baseball highlight reels are digitally manipulated to find the compositions from which the paintings are made. The found frozen moments are often transitional, creating layered pictures that bleed into one another in either obvious or obfuscated ways. These baseball paintings often end up being, through the lens of the television camera, images of isolation, creating both icons of deified athletes, often Black men, and meditations on the loneliness of social distancing. For the artist, these are a means of responding to the dual crises of the racial reckoning and the pandemic both still ongoing in the United States. In all these paintings, the artist’s focus, as he is making them, is on the way tone and color work together to create plastic pictorial spaces in which emotions can live. The interplay between simultaneous deep recession and the absolute flatness of paint on a surface creates a tension that invites contemplation and reflection
Nathan Mullins, born in Clarksdale, MS, received his BFA from The University of Southern Mississippi in 2012 and his MFA from American University in 2015. His solo exhibitions include Source Material at Thomas University in Thomasville, GA in 2018 and Supernatural, Superserious at Almost Circle Gallery in Biloxi, MS in 2017. His group exhibitions include Powers at Play: Sirena LaBurn & Nathan Mullins at The Art Studio, Inc. in Beaumont, TX in 2021; Amor Fati at Wagner College in Staten Island, NY in 2019; Hide and Seek in San Diego, CA in 2018; and Berlin and Back at the Goethe-Institut in Washington, DC in 2016. In 2021, he curated a show of drawings by women, Mythopoeia, at 621 Gallery in Tallahasse, FL, which included participation from poets in the doctoral program at Florida State University to produce a catalog, the sales of which directly supported Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida. Mullins wrote for the online and print publications produced by Mississippi Modern and served on the company’s Board of Directors as Community Outreach Coordinator from 2014 – 2016. He currently teaches painting and drawing at the University of Southern Mississippi and lives in Petal, MS with his partner and two cats.