Episode Transcript
Diana O (00:14):
Welcome to another Compelling Conversation, and this time with my friend and fellow karateka, an amazing artist, Nathan Brujis, born in Lima, Peru. Nathan is a celebrated artist whose work transcends borders and cultures with a profound academic background. Nathan studied art and philosophy at Brandeis University and earned his master's degree from the American University of Washington DC. His artistic journey has been marked by numerous accolades, including the prestigious Debra Josepha Cohen Memorial Award for Excellence in painting the New York Studio School Faculty Award and the Lorenzo Magnifico Award at the Florence Biennale. Del Nathan's art has been showcased in major exhibitions across New York, Lima, and Italy, earning him a revered spot in the contemporary, contemporary art scene. Currently residing and working in New York, Nathan continues to push the boundaries and creativity and expression. I'm thrilled to share Nathan with you today and welcome Nathan. I wanted to ask you, how has art influenced your relationships?
Nathan (01:26):
I grew up in Lima, Peru. My mom started going to art school when I was very young, and we lived in a more like a city neighborhood when I was that age, and she was going to the school of Bo Art in Lima. And then in the middle of her studies, we moved to a more suburban kind of area of the city, and we had a big house with a pool, and my mom had her own studio. They built her a special studio where she would paint. It was right next to the garage, big windows. I grew up hanging out in her studio from a young age. I had this talent to copy things. I could draw from nature very easily, and I could sculpt anything. I was young. I was four years old maybe, and I took the ceramics class and I took the clay and I started making an ice world, and I made a seal and polar bear and an igloo and an Eskimo, and I was so, so young and the teacher couldn't believe it how I was just forming things in two seconds.
(02:56):
It was just forming. And then I would take a piece of paper, it's very young, and I would feel the energy and where the perfect energy was for a specific piece of paper. Sometimes it was outside of the paper, sometimes it was over here. Each shape had its own energetic thing and I would just feel it and then it's here. And I don't know, this all just came to me naturally, but I guess the original relationship with art is the relationship with my mom, the feeling of love and being around her passion and just watching and observing. But I never thought that I would be an artist. I thought I would do something else. I just loved art and it just came naturally to me. In high school, I would take art classes and we had this competition in school. It was called Los Floral, the Floral Games, and it was music and dance and photography and sculpture and painting. And my last year in high school, I entered in the photography. I went to markets and took all these photos of markets in Lima and developed the photos. My mom had a dark room in the house, so we could develop there, but I don't think I actually developed my own photos. I think I had them develop, but I would play in the dark room too, and we would make
Diana O (04:29):
This was with your mom?
Nathan (04:31):
Yeah, with my mom, yes. It was like the pool room on one side and the dark room on the other side. And it was super cool to have that access to that in the house. My mom had her friends come over and paint, and so they would all work together and it was like a communal creative thing happening there, and I would just be hanging out and seeing them all work and do their thing. It was quite,
Diana O (04:57):
So the other room was a pool with a pool.
Nathan (05:00):
We had a swimming pool. Swimming pool outside.
Diana O (05:04):
So it wasn't a room with a pool. It was pool,
Nathan (05:05):
No. And then there was the room where all the pool equipment is where the circulating water and the chemicals and all that stuff is that you put for the pool. And then next to that room, there was the dark room for the photography and they would develop and they would all these things.
Diana O (05:24):
So that was a part of your DNA growing up?
Nathan (05:27):
Growing up, yes. I never saw it as a possible career. I saw it as a, because my father was a businessman, and that was my male example.
Diana O (05:38):
What was the turning point when you finally decided, okay, this is it?
Nathan (05:42):
So in this Flora games in, I made in this class, it was a very good artist. It was a teacher, and his wife was a pretty good artist also. She did textiles. But this class, I made this sculpture of surreal, and the teacher came up to me, he's like, how do you come up with this stuff? And then I made a copy of a Persian sculpture of the Anki with all the little beard circles, and I made a model of it, and I copied it exactly, and I turned that into the competition. I don't think I won. I think maybe my photography got something, but then I went to college to study, and then I wanted to be a genetic engineer. So I got into Brandeis, which was one of the best medical pre-med schools in the country. It was rank third in the country at that time, and I didn't like it. I thought maybe biology because I loved animals. But then I realized I liked looking at animals. I like the beauty of the animals. I don't want to study or the biological stuff just wasn't the right fit for me. So I took a drawing class my second semester freshman year, and it was, I think the professor's name was Markmann, and I started drawing. He couldn't believe it to the point that in the final
(07:09):
Lecture of the class, comparing my drawings to Giacometti an awesome teacher, but just mine, not everybody else is. Wow.
Diana O (07:19):
So
Nathan (07:20):
He had an eye. He had an eye, and then he quit being an artist and went to law school afterwards. I mean, I'm not going to say that's happened because of me. I mean, many people changed their careers, but it was just interesting and it was at that moment that I realized that I really liked the way this, that there's something here for me. This is not just something I can do. I can actually really do this. So then I started taking art classes at
(07:50):
Brandeis and I experimented with conceptual stuff. I did a lot of sculpture. I loved doing sculpture. I took a sculpture class and I was also doing philosophy. I did a double major in art and philosophy, so I started doing some conceptual stuff, but then I kind of wanted to have all the conceptual stuff be part of just the philosophy and understanding and art. I wanted to learn about representation and looking and investigating. A friend of mine was working for operational exodus, which was getting Jewish people out of Russia at the time and bringing them to the stage or to Israel. So they had a big version Exodus week, and I did this life-size sculpture for the center of campus of a life-sized person in plaster, a white person coming out of a ramp walking into a giant Jewish star in a brick road. So that was fun.
Diana O (08:49):
What did that result in?
Nathan (08:51):
Nothing. I mean, they raised money and they got awareness of the situation, and then the whole thing ended up in the dumpster because what am I going to do with a giant thing? In a way, that's kind of why I stopped doing sculpture because it's just so bulky and there's no place to put it. I would love to do sculpture again at some point when I have to write space. My senior year thesis ended up being all self- portraits. I did a whole series of self-portraits
Diana O (09:24):
In different styles.
Nathan (09:26):
A little bit, yes. And one of them, my main piece was a painting of self-portrait and the reflection in a window at the studio, so you could see me and the landscape at the same time. And I became really interested in the relationship between the viewer, the window and what's behind, seeing two things at the same time, which eventually became up to this day. A big part of my work is how to see two things at the same time, how to see the big and the small at the same time.
(10:00):
Windows became fascinating to me the next year when I went to visit the university, because my girlfriend at the time was still going there because she was younger than me. I went to visit the art studios and I went to this woman's studio and she had a photo of my painting as an inspiration to work. That's cool. Which was kind of cool. I was like, oh my God. Wow. So then after graduating from Brandeis, because I was so interested in the perception, I wanted to learn about perception and the relationship between the artists and the object scene or the subject scene. I went to the New York Studio School on eighth Street. First. I went for the summer between junior and senior year in 91. And it was all working from the figure. So when I went back to do my thesis and all the self-portraits, I had already done a summer at the studio school. But then after I graduated, I went back. I came back to New York to do a
serious two year study of figure work and still life. And the idea there is not to represent necessarily what you're seeing. It's not about an academic representation of a figure, an anatomical. It's more understanding abstract values through perception. And that was eye-opening to me to
Diana O (11:22):
That help you understand what you had experienced as a kid when you had that. The energy
Nathan (11:29):
Energy thing. Yes. I think that has more to do with my sensitivity and spiritual connection, that that's a natural thing for me. But yes, the abstract values are definitely sin clearer when I allow myself to be open in that way, because then I can be very sensitive in what I'm perceiving. So how the light hits something, how the composition is structured, how the colors create space. The thing is that it's all about relationships. It's about the relationship between the viewer and the subject and the object or subject observed. It's about the relationship of the different things, how they interact with each other, the psychological relationship between what's being seen and the one seeing it and all that affects the final product. The final piece of art, my first painting teacher in college, he said, nothing exists in isolation.
Diana O (12:38):
What do you mean?
Nathan (12:39):
Everything is always in relation to something else. There's no void. You're always in a, it's always figure background. There's always a relationship, and the observer changes the observed and vice versa.
Diana O (13:00):
What do you mean by that? The observer?
Nathan (13:04):
When I'm seeing you and I'm translating what I'm seeing into a two-dimensional reality, the way I'm perceiving it changes what's out there
Diana O (13:15):
On the canvas,
Nathan (13:16):
Yes, but also in reality.
Diana O (13:20):
Oh, okay.
Nathan (13:22): Yes. How
Diana O (13:23):
Did this happen?
Nathan (13:24):
Because I mean, just energetically you have a reaction to my being present. But also, I took this class with this teacher and he was fascinated by Cezanne, and he would show us, you have a bottle, and then you put something next to it and the bottle moves, you can see it. It shifts just by the fact that something's next to it. You put something across something and each side, if I put something behind a bottle, one side is higher, and the other side, it's slower. It don't go into a straight line. Things change other things around them.
Diana O (14:08):
In the perception of it.
Nathan (14:09):
In the perception of it, yes. But I'm going to go further and say that we all affect each other. We're not in isolation. When somebody enter enters a room, it affects everybody else. There's chemicals in the air all the time. We're sending out smells and all that affects your being.
Diana O (14:34):
How does this relate to the most important lesson that you've learned in your personal and professional life?
Nathan (14:40):
I mean, the question is what is the most important lesson that I've learned
Diana O (14:44):
My professional life?
Nathan (14:46):
And that's a total order. I mean, there's a lot of lessons.
Diana O (14:49):
There's a lot of lessons.
Nathan (14:49):
Yes. The most important lesson is to be true, to learn, to be true, and to be true. I have to accept that I am part of everything and that I'm not in control of everything. Everything's always changing, and that things are not perfect and that it's always a flow. There's always changing.
Diana O (15:14):
What do you mean by true? Nathan (15:15):
To be open, to really see what's really there and to try to really be who I really am always and authentic, to be my authentic self, to be true to me. And that may mean that I have to change.
Diana O (15:32):
Was there a time in your life when you were not authentic?
Nathan (15:35):
I'm a pretty authentic guy, but there were times in my life where I had issues with substances that had a hold of my motives and that were very strong underlying currents in my decision making that I couldn't even see because I was not in that state. And even if I thought I was being authentic, I really wasn't. And again, this is an ideal, right? We can only be as authentic as we know at the time. There's subconscious levels that I may not be able to perceive, and ideally I am trying to move closer and closer to having my eyes open. And that's why I've done a lot of work in myself. I try to create like that too, because the relationship between creation and life is very protected. In the best case scenario for myself, life is an artist life. That sounds kind of cliche, but I would like to be able to be clear enough in my sight and in my vision so that I can express the now in the present as I'm working. And to do that, I have to be on the edge,
Diana O (17:02):
On (17:02):
The edge
Nathan (17:03):
Of breaking it. Even with life
Diana O (17:12):
Reality,
Nathan (17:14):
No. If I create something and I'm really true in my expression, I have to be willing to go beyond what's there and to go beyond what's there. It always feels like it could all fall apart any second because I'm truly being present because it's always changing. I'm always changing. And as I move through time and I'm changing, so then the painting's changing too. And to change it means to break it. So it's always on the edge. When I'm in that line between destruction and creation, it vibrates so it becomes alive because it becomes true, because all the parts fit together in this cohesive state of being.
Diana O (18:06):
So what happens when you're dancing?
Nathan (18:08):
I'm not a professional dancer. Diana O (18:09):
Yeah, that's right. We got to explain. I know that you do this. Five senses dancing,
Nathan (18:13):
Five freedoms. Five freedoms, yes.
Diana O (18:15):
Five freedoms.
Nathan (18:16):
Explain
Diana O (18:16):
What that is a little bit.
Nathan (18:18):
Yeah, it's a practice I started about a year and a half ago. It's been really inspirational and informative, and it's a practice created by Gabriel Roth, and they take you through five rhythms of music flow, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness. And usually it's two ways per class, unless you do a workshop or whatever, that's all day. And it's got different maps and different layers. But just to keep it simple, it's really about learning to react to music in a purely somatic way, to get out of your own head and to really be in the moment with the music, with the people around you. And it becomes a really interesting mirror of life within the dance floor. And they take you through a chaos state where you let everything go and you go into this lyrical, beautiful dance and then to a really still dance, which is really meditative.
(19:19):
And it's been really spiritual experiences in the dance have been quite powerful for me. And then I've been able to take that energy into the studio too and bring it into the canvas. Also, my karate practice influences my art, my painting a lot. When I'm doing kumite, it feels very flow-like state; katas are very much like a dance with its own energy and personality. The key eye and the chief flow and the points of energy and the slow moves versus fast moves. The relationship between the application and the moves, the relationship between, it's a relationship between the two people, and it's not really about hurting each other, about scoring a point that makes it into a really, it's an art form.
(20:17):
And within the art form, it can be super poetic that way. I see parts of my paintings moving with other parts of the paintings. I see myself reacting to the painting as if the painting was the application. That's one level of things, right? There's a lot going on. There's the relationship of art history of where we are in time, of what's happened before, what's happening next, and what the stories of the development of art in the world and how we've gotten to where we are. And to be aware of all that development and to allow that to influence the creation. That's another set of relationship that's always ever present. And then there's the relationship with the sist of the moment of society and how that comes into play from, at least from my process of painting in a very intuitive way as a free flowing action reaction that RIS comes in automatically. It's almost like I can't help it. So when something major in society is going on, it just comes in into the paintings as part of the expression. So there's many different levels of content happening simultaneously within each work, and we are all complex individuals.
Diana O (21:49):
You talked about how when you were a little less authentic, maybe your motives were different. How have your motives changed?
Nathan (21:56):
I stopped defining myself by, and this is all ideal, okay. It's not saying I'm a hundred percent there or in any way, shape or form, but at least I strive towards being more humble
(22:11):
And right sized. I always wanted to do the right thing, but I really want to do the right thing now and to be of service to others. I think that people are getting my content and my creations, I can actually help people with it. I think art can influence the way we perceive things and open minds and a allow people to maybe see things in a different way. I try to be aware of when I'm doing something for a selfish reason and when I'm doing something, because it's the right thing to do. And I used to not be able to do that, see that so clearly. But I take counsel now. I try not to not be my own counsel, and I check with other people.
Diana O (22:59):
Wow. That's some wisdom
Nathan (23:00):
Because rationalization is a very powerful tool of the mind to convince itself to do the wrong thing for the right reason.
Diana O (23:13):
That's a good, helpful, pragmatic tip to give our listeners.
Nathan (23:20):
Yes.
Diana O (23:21):
To be humble and to seek counsel.
Nathan (23:23):
Seek counsel. Yes. Because I tend to rationalize, and that's not always the best idea. I don't want to do things alone. So, I've found different groups of people, different friends, that I can reach out and check off things, especially big decisions, and check my motives, because sometimes I want to be a king baby and cry if I don't get my milk and be selfish. And it usually doesn't turn out well when that's the motive behind my choices.
Diana O (24:11):
I love this. That's so great. Thank you, Nathan.
Nathan (24:14): Yes.
Diana O (24:15):
I think we've covered it.
Nathan (24:17):
Yes.
Diana O (24:17):
For now. And do you have any advice for people who are looking to improve their relationships with their family, with their coworkers, with their bosses, with their
Nathan (24:34):
Yes. I found that what's really helped me and help others around me is to make sure that I'm taking care of myself first. Love others, but sometimes to detach with love from others and to not try to control other people and to accept that we are all having our own experience in our own road. And to show respect to that, and to not try to control it and change it in other people, because I don't want them to do it to me. I want to go through my own road, unless somebody asks me. I don't want to be given too much unsolicited advice, advice, some
Diana O (25:19):
Really good advice. I love that.
Nathan (25:20):
And to keep showing up for myself, for life, for other people, and showing up is a big part of the process. And to let go of the results and just keep trying to take right action at all times.
Diana O (25:40):
Maybe you control the paint.
Nathan (25:42):
No!
Diana O (25:48):
The paint controls you.
Nathan (25:49):
No, it's freedom. It's just the universe controls the paint. I'm just a channel.
Diana O (25:59):
Oh my God. Alright, on that note, I'm going to say goodbye. Thank you. Before we wrap up, I'd like to thank Oliver Kiker for the jingle and Gwendolyn Christian for the backup support. Also, a quick reminder, these interviews are not a substitute for professional, medical, legal, or psychological advice. Always consult with a qualified professional for any major decisions in your life. And thanks for joining me and exploring the connections that make us human and learning insights and strategies to help us build, heal, and nurture relationships, including and especially the one with yourself. It's been an honor to
share this time with you and to bring you conversations with some of the brightest who deserve more recognition. Remember, life's too short to take too seriously, so don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Get outside and let's continue this journey of life together. See you next time.
