Nathan Childers
Visiting Assistant Professor, Exhibitions & Media Coordinator
Email: nchilders@ksu.edu
Office: Willard 223
M.F.A., Painting and Drawing, University of Alabama
B.F.A., Painting and Drawing, University of West Georgia
Bio
Nathan Childers joined the Department of Art at Kansas State University as Visiting Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Galleries and Media in August 2024. He holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Alabama and a BFA from the University of West Georgia.
Childers’s body of work engages with visual traditions within rural LGBTQ+ culture through figurative painting and an examination of queer existence. Since 2019, he has shown and received awards in exhibitions including the AXA Art Prize US Exhibition (New York Academy of Art), the Positive/Negative 38 National Juried Art Exhibition (Johnson City, TN), the It Was All Very Queer II National Juried Exhibition (St. Louis, MO), Art Fields, the Georgia Watercolor Society National Exhibition, the Mark Arts Oil Painting National Exhibition, and the Kansas Watercolor Society National Exhibition. He won best in show at an exhibition titled “Queer Aesthetics” at the Mississippi University for Women in Fall 2022 and at the inaugural Susan Nomberg McCollough Fine Arts Biennial National Juried Exhibition. He has also participated in solo and three-person shows at the Lowe Mill in Huntsville, Alabama; the Vault Gallery in Newnan, Georgia; and the Sella Granata Art Gallery and the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Artist Statement
Queerness has often occupied the threshold between presence and erasure. The issue of visibility has been important to queer people historically and continues to play a crucial role in queer self-definition. Through painting, I investigate the impact of place on queer culture and queer identity. By refusing to sensationalize queerness, I allow the paintings to focus on the all-too-real feeling of not belonging, a feeling highlighted by contrasts: between the colors of the figures and their environments, and between carefully worked and less refined areas of the painted surface. This exploration is my way of awakening viewers to scenes of underrepresented people, the persistence of outdated gender roles, and the means through which LGBTQIA+ individuals identify as whole persons through and beyond the spheres of gender and sexuality.
Orange Peel Rose
The Things We Lock Away
No Need to Change
Portrait of Travis