Nathan Allard is a self-taught painter who resides in the woods of Maine, where he was born and raised. He works in the tradition of painters who do not use photographic reference, instead choosing to paint from life. For Nathan, direct observation reveals the subtleties of the natural world that cannot be captured through a lens; it enables him to bring his own experience, memory, and interpretation of the subject into his painting. While he studies reality intently, it is more important for him to paint his emotional response to the world rather than an exact replication.
Allard works with the medium graphite, watercolor, and egg tempera. His appreciation for Paleolithic and Renaissance painters – who often used raw materials from their surroundings to create pigments – has led him to study historic pigments and to create the majority of the pigments that he uses in his tempera paintings. He often includes material from the scene he paints into the paint itself: charred bones from a raven, charcoal from firewood, or verdigris from old copper pots. Through this transmutation, the paintings become a vestige of the subjected preserved with respect for the past and acknowledgment of the present.