Q&A: How to Paint a Divorce with Nate Renner

Nate Renner

Nate Renner, painter, is like really creative. Read the Q&A from our interview available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

ZACK: So I'm joined by Nate Renner. Nate Renner is a wonderful visual artist, a pop artist, and a student of pop art. And I found out about you through Ugly Art Co. We're both involved with Ugly Art Co. And I had to have you on the show, so thanks for joining me.

NATE: No problem, dude.

ZACK: Yeah. So looking at your art, I am very attracted to it because it's pop art. It uses imagery from brands and uses color. What is it about pop art that attracts you?

NATE: Commercialism. Repetition is huge for me. I've got this whole thing where I feel like my practice is about, in the South. There's a lot of tradition and repetition, especially in the rural South. There's a guy that drives home from work every day and buys a six pack. And as he's driving home, he throws each beer can out at the same spot on the road on the way to his house. And you'll be driving by and you'll see a pile of beer cans in the ditch. You wonder how the hell that got there. It's because of Frank getting off work every single day.

ZACK: Fucking Frank.

NATE: But also, I grew up a little bit Church of Christ, which is fucking nuts.

ZACK: Me too. It’s insane.

NATE: And something about being in the South and people doing rituals—they'll go to the store and spend their last $10 on cigarettes and beer and dog food before they buy their kids food or buy their family food. And it's kind of looking at that with my art, with vices specifically. And I don't know, something about tying in the religious aspect to the traditional Southern piece of shit.

ZACK: Yeah, I love that. So you're talking about vices. What is it about vices that attracts you? How have vices impacted your art?

NATE: It's mostly that whole concept of the tradition of getting off work, going buying beer or dip or cigarettes and kind of putting that before everything else. That's attractive to me. It's also escapism, I guess. People use that to escape the reality because a lot of us have a fucked up reality. So I don't know something about that, I think.

ZACK: Yeah. And Church of Christ. We're fucked in the head.

NATE: Well, we went to Mexican restaurants on Sunday. And Wednesday nights. We went and got that chicken, cheese, and rice.

ZACK: Yes, chicken, cheese, and rice. P5. So where are you from originally?

NATE: Memphis.

ZACK: Memphis. Okay. So what have you learned about Southern rituals? How do you think the Southern aspect influences your art?

NATE: People are beholden to brands, and it's almost a cultural thing throughout different culture. Culture is very localized. And it can be even between families—some people are like, oh we only buy premium saltine crackers or we only get Doritos. We don't get off brand Doritos. People are associated with brands that spark memory for how they grew up. And they attach certain brands to certain members of their family, like, oh, my granddad liked Moon Pies or some bullshit like that. So for me, exploring those brands and trying to find that connection between the viewer and their upbringing or their family is something that resonates with me.

ZACK: Are there any brands that you connected to personally growing up?

NATE: A shit ton. I made some work back in 2017 about that. NuGrape soda. Yoo-Hoos. Coca Cola obviously. Vienna sausages. Currently Raz. Currently I'm obsessed with Raz Vapes.

ZACK: So is my grandma.

NATE: Shout out to Raz.

NATE: This podcast is sponsored by Raz.

ZACK: Your Instagram name is Nate Drinks Busch.

NATE: Hell yeah.

ZACK: What is behind that? Putting a name brand in your Instagram name?

NATE: I need to change it to Busch Light.

ZACK: You're on a diet?

NATE: Just for a while, it was kind of my thing. If I was out in public or whatever, I'd drink Busch. It just feels very Southern and very I don't know, kind of silly. But I changed my name to Nathan Art for a little while, and I was like, this feels too cliche. So I just went back to recognizable. And I tried to get Busch to send me some shit or let me work with them, and they never did.

ZACK: They need artist representation.

NATE: Yeah. PBR does that.

ZACK: Yeah. That's why hipsters love it.

NATE: And I was like, why can't Busch do something similar to that.

ZACK: It's too gay. So with commercialism, do you find yourself as an artist having a hard time selling art or what has your process been like promoting and selling your art?

NATE: I feel like I do pretty good. My biggest hurdle is making it. I'm very much a fairweather painter. I have to be feeling totally ready to make art before I can make art. With the exception of this past show at Ugly Art Co, I went through a divorce and made a bunch of work about my divorce. They were these black and white dying flowers which were one of the most freeing things I've ever made because all the art I've ever made has been so thought out to a fucking tee.

And then the process used to lend itself to error. I used to screenprint. So I would have everything thought out. And then screen printing on canvas is kind of a bitch. The acrylic ink dries on the screen really fast, so you have to make the work very quickly. There's no room for error, but there's all the room for error, if that makes any sense. I want everything to be lined up the way I want it essentially. But with a screen you get all these natural elements that happen, with the way, especially with the way I would set up the image with a diffusion dither. It would lend itself to the errors being more pronounced and beautiful.

So I'm trying to move away from the screen though because it was so many steps just to make a piece of art. And I had to have another pair of hands and the pair of hands I had had to be somewhat able to look at something and say, that's lined up, but not just look at it because you have a screen hovering over a canvas. I didn't have a jig or anything like that. We would hover the screen over the canvas, get under the screen to look at it and be like, is that lined up? And kind of look through it and then just pull it. So it was—

ZACK: Tedious.

NATE: Stressful. But so many cool things would happen. But it kind of is a hindrance to making work. The process. I'm trying to move away from screens, even though a lot of people really like my screen work.

ZACK: Yeah, it's very Warholian.

NATE: But he was like, fuck it, I'm going to have people do this. I don't have to do it.

ZACK: Yeah, he just has the ideas.

NATE: Yeah. And I was like, that would be sick. But at the same time, I don't know, there was something freeing about the paintings of the flowers because I could just walk out and make it. I didn't have to think. I didn't have to plan. I didn't have to do anything. I just had to walk out and paint it.

ZACK: I love that you mentioned that you got a divorce. I'm also a divorcee. I made a lot of Divorce Art.

NATE: Did it help you?

ZACK: Yeah. It—so. I'll be honest. I did it as a fuck you, kind of vindictive thing. But now I'm at a place where I'm self-aware of that, and it's like, oh, I was making art. Just not to be creative, but just to use it as revenge, almost. And luckily, I'm at a better place. But with you—how did you process your divorce through art?

NATE: Well, the concept of the dying flowers in the title, "Flowers Ain't Forever," is just love is probably not forever. And flowers are beautiful. You get them, they don't fucking last. That's why I hate buying them. You buy some flowers and they're dead. Three days. Four days, 5 to 6 days maybe, if you're lucky. I'm sure all the flower people are going to be like, you don't know anything about flowers. But it's something about watching beauty dissipate is how I kind of tie it into the dying flowers. And some of them were in white vases. My ex-wife was a collector of little Bakelite white vases from the thrift store. A lot of that show was kind of an homage to our marriage and a mourning.

But I wanted to be as pretty as I could make it. And I used to fucking hate—have you seen the work? There's some splatter on it. And I used to hate that shit. I used to be like, I don't get it. Cool. You splattered some paint on the canvas, but when I was going through it, and I physically felt the energy needing to leave my body, and I would splatter. It finally clicked and resonated with me—oh, this kinetic art. I think that's what it's called. It is a release.

ZACK: You get that anger out. Not necessarily anger—

NATE: The anxiety. The energy.

ZACK: And it's anger that's masking sadness. And it's hard to get that out. Do you feel healed or did it start a healing process for you to go through that?

NATE: It was kind of a wild show. I had not shown anything as a solo show in seven years. That's a big space to fill at Ugly Art Co. It's a great space. I love the little foot walls that come out that remind me of the Guggenheim. But I just filled up the front with work that I had made in the past so people could kind of get—if it were people that don't know me, they could come in and say, oh, this is what he typically makes. And then the back was all the divorce stuff. I made some—I felt powerful work for that. A lot of people that came to the show, a lot of women were like, I can feel the sadness, I can feel the pain and the sadness, and this resonates with me. And I was like, perfect. That's what I'm supposed to do. I even had a View-Master. I had it on a podium, and this View-Master was a gift that I can't remember whether she got it, or I got it years back for an anniversary, but it had pictures of us, young pictures of us when we were dating.

ZACK: My God.

NATE: Yeah.

ZACK: So that's fucked up.

NATE: I had that there for people to look through, and I thought about doing something crazy, which I couldn't figure out in time, but I wanted to attach the viewfinder to a heavy ass chain. So that if you wanted to look at the viewfinder, you're gonna have to deal with this heavy chain that you're gonna have to lift up at the same time. Couldn't figure it out in time. But people liked the viewfinder so much that a girl bought it. It wasn't even for sale, but a patron was—Anderson came up to me and said, hey, she wants to know if the viewfinder is for sale. The View-Master. I was like, what does she want to do with it? And he was like, she's buying one of the word paintings. She wants to put the View-Master underneath it. I was like, fuck, that's a good idea.

ZACK: That is a really good idea.

NATE: Okay, I'll sell it to her. I liked the idea so much. I was like, yeah, you can—it's a very personal item. But I was like, what? Why do I need this still? And it'll make a very powerful, impactful piece in her home. I'm thinking, so it was worth selling, I think.

ZACK: I think so too. I love when something so personal is now completely in a different context in someone's home. That's one of my favorite things about making art is. And when someone buys it, it's like, oh, I'm living in someone's home now. Kind of. What is the pressure of putting on a solo show? How do you think that impacts you as an artist?

NATE: With a group show, it's about getting a cohesive, curated experience where you have other people and personalities to deal with and you've got each individual people's friend group that show up and all of that situation. So when you do a solo show, it's like, okay, well, it's on me to make it look good. It's on me for it to resonate with the audience. It's on me. There's a lot of solo shows that suck. There's a lot of art in the city that sucks, to be honest with you. I'm not trying to be a douchebag, but—

ZACK: What does suck mean to you?

NATE: It's not elevated.

ZACK: It's not thought out.

NATE: It's not thought out. It's like, oh, I paint and I make three paintings a year, or they just started painting six months ago. And because who they are, who they know, they're showing work over people that have been in the city dedicated to art, and it kind of just drives me crazy.

ZACK: And when you were getting art critiques, how did that change your work?

NATE: First off, I think you have to respect the people around you that are critiquing you because if not, it just comes off as probably vindictive. The city has a problem with a me-first mentality. I've got to eat. I gotta eat first. I'm not going to put anybody else on. That's something I really struggled with when I tried to make community. I want Memphis art to move away from that shit. Because I feel the strongest art comes from a tight community of artists that want each other to succeed. There's so much dog eat dog in the city because there's scarcity here.

ZACK: So going back to you being Southern. Was art celebrated in your household?

NATE: Oh, no. “Dude, you're gay.” I'm not, but I do art.

ZACK: When you were a young Nate, how did you discover art? What were you like as a young creative?

NATE: I drew a lot. And this is kind of funny. I did it for attention. I still do it for attention.

ZACK: Me too.

NATE: It's still for attention at the heart of it. Let's not play around.

ZACK: Well validation—people shit on it, but it's still a thing humans need. To feel supported for something they're creating.

NATE: Yeah, 100%. Those pictures of dogs and fields and labs and ducks. It'd be classic prints that every dad in the South had in their house somewhere.

ZACK: I can see it perfectly.

NATE: I was redrawing those all the time to impress my dad. Or to impress my mom just to get some type of—because I came from a very broken family—to get some type of attention. And then in high school, because I came from a broken family, I didn't really get to take art as an elective. So I had to wait until college to really try to figure it out. I didn't have the luxury of taking 2 or 3 years of art in high school.

ZACK: Our art program was a joke. It was so—it was awful.

NATE: Yeah. I mean, it's no disrespect, but it's Amory.

ZACK: Exactly. Yeah.

NATE: They're not—it's not exactly the most art driven city in the country.

ZACK: Not at all.

NATE: Especially in the South.

ZACK: Are you still in contact with your parents?

NATE: My mom lives in my neighborhood. I don't talk to her very much. I did, actually, this is kind of wild. I actually got with her and her side of the family at Thanksgiving this past year for the first time—it was the first time I've been in the same room with all them together in 20 years.

ZACK: That sounds like anxiety.

NATE: Oh, it was—it was good, though. I was kind of shocked. After my divorce, I'm just like, fuck it. With pretty much everything.

ZACK: So do you still think you seek attention from your parents through your art?

NATE: No, absolutely not. I could care less. I'm definitely just trying to seek external validation.

ZACK: Other than needing it from parents, where do you think that comes from?

NATE: I think it stems from that. I don't think—I think it turns into needing it from your sort of your environment. More so than at the time my parents were my environment. And now I have a new environment, and I still crave that. I got pretty pissed a few years ago when I was trying to build community and it just felt like nothing was happening. And I think maybe the right people weren't around. And then the Covid thing happened. I had this crazy idea before virtual reality really got—it's still dead. Virtual reality is still so fucking stupid.

ZACK: Yeah, I had a virtual reality hyperfixation. I was like, I want to build worlds in Meta.

NATE: Worlds in the metaverse.

ZACK: And I made a pretty cool thing. But I was like, this kind of sucks and my neck hurts and I feel very nauseous.

NATE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was going to do something at the Jack Robinson Gallery. And my friend Jason Lee had made a 3D model of the Jack Robinson Gallery. The side gallery, I guess now it's opened in the front, too, but it was mainly just the side one. And I had this idea. It was called Church. It was ChVRch. And it was going to be a show in real life. There'd be a headset there, two headsets there. You could put it on and experience a different show. And the idea was to have a potluck. I wanted to bring some elements from church to the art community to try to build fellowship with artists. And a potluck is a great way to do that. It's great to eat and drink with people when you want to build community.

ZACK: Yeah. And the idea of bringing Southern food into an art gallery, that's really cool.

NATE: My first show in 2017 at the old Crosstown space you could rent on Cleveland. My friend Cole Jeanes, who's now, I'm sure y'all know him from Kinfolk and Hard Times Deli and Super Smash Society. And I hit him up and another guy named Dutch. I got them to make food—I did my first show. I thought it down to a tee. Every piece was made for the show, and we had boiled peanuts and chicken on a stick. We had catered, curated food for the show. And there was big Busch beers or Tall Boys Busch beer. If you wanted to drink beer, it was either a 40 or a Tallboy Busch. And there was the food there. So there was chicken on a stick. And there's also Vienna sausages that have been elevated. Everything was gas station food elevated.

ZACK: You're speaking my language. That makes me want a culinary honeybun. Because that was my gas station choice. Honey buns and the white iced ones. The big fat ones.

NATE: I've got something to tell you.

ZACK: What's that?

NATE: I found this the other day. Don't tell anybody. Donettes has a honey bun flavor.

ZACK: Shut the fuck up.

NATE: It's so good.

ZACK: That sounds amazing.

NATE: I ate like three bags already

ZACK: My heart just started palpitating. With gas station food, do you get inspiration from food or does it ever show up in your work or anything?

NATE: Yeah, I've got a bunch of cyanotypes that I did that are—there's some McDonald's ones, fries and the burger. Some Taco Bell ones.

ZACK: I made some McDonald's art. Because that was my first job.

NATE: Oh, you worked at McDonald's?

ZACK: When I was 15 for a year and a half. I always smelled like French fries and not in a cool way.

NATE: So can you eat it still?

ZACK: Oh, yeah. I mean, it took me a while to get back into it, but I fucking love their barbecue sauce and nuggets.

NATE: Very interesting. I like McDonald's. I like the imagery of McDonald's. I like the nostalgia. Everyone has the McDonald's story.

ZACK: So I would consider you to be prolific. You're always working on something.

NATE: It's an illusion.

ZACK: That’s very Pop Art

NATE: Something I struggle with is I do a lot of commission work. But I struggle with getting a commission and then waiting until the last absolute fucking second to do it. And then I get so guilty that I haven't worked on it that I don't work on it. It is a vicious cycle. I've talked to other artists about it. A lot of artists struggle with it. The best success I've had with doing that is somehow biting the bullet as quickly as you can and trying to do the commission as quickly as you possibly can. Do it. I can't speak from experience. I've only done a few times where I got a commission was like, oh, I'm on Adderall, I'm just going to do it right and I might be done with it three months early.

ZACK: But now you don't have the anxiety of being like, oh fuck, I gotta do that commission.

NATE: Oh, exactly. It wears on me, dude. It will keep me from making anything. I feel like, oh, if I make this and I'm not making the commission, someone's going to see that and they're going to feel slighted. I've probably fucked off a lot of people because of that. It's sad. But you make when you feel good and you don't really make art when you're depressed. The depression controls my productivity and art.

ZACK: I went through a pretty big downspell and the number one thing I felt bad about was feeling guilty for not making art. Because it is my calling it is my true path. And when you don't honor that path and your natural born thing that you're born to do, it's depressing. And I've struggled with consistency too, because of being overwhelmed. Scared that I don't have the right idea. And so sometimes I just have to scribble until something comes.

NATE: I've never been that lucky. I've never been lucky enough to just pour from the ether. When I don't have it thought out.

ZACK: Okay. So you're very conceptual.

NATE: Very. Everything I do, I've thought out so far.

ZACK: Do you write in a notebook, a Notes app?

NATE: No, it's just in my head. I would love to be able to fucking take notes. I would love to be able to write something down. And remember that I wrote it down or even look to it or reference it. It's all—I've had really good ideas before that I cannot remember at all.

ZACK: Oh, that's the worst. That's why I have notebooks laying in every station just in case. I can be pretty disorganized when it comes to physical things. And so I have to trick myself to remember.

So one of my favorite things to ask artists is if you had all the time and resources, all the energy, no depression, what would be your dream project?

NATE: I would probably want to work with massive screens. I tried one time. It's expensive. The people that make the screens don't want you to take the screens. I would work with very big screens. Very large canvases.

ZACK: Warhol shit.

NATE: Bigger.

Where to find Nate

Instagram: @nate_drinks_busch