Nathan Durfee was born in the small town of Bethel, Vt., on June 26, 1983. His artistic aspirations first showed themselves in the classroom: a self-described “doodler,” moments of boredom became sketches and designs in notebook margins. After spending his high school years in Nevada, he migrated south to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design to become a traditional portrait artist. As his current work boldly exhibits, Durfee instead decided to take his art in a unique, wholly personalized direction. “I thought I would be a traditional, realistic painter, but then, if I’m able to create a reality, why do I need to have it adhere to the one we live in now?” This ability to create both conventional and alternative realities allows him to push and pull his work from the realistic to the abstract with imaginative skill.rnrnHis fanciful, often abstract subjects share an organic connection with his informal school-day sketching. While working, he says, “I try to keep that wandering state of mind as I start laying down brush strokes, a narrative begins to develop. I keep molding and polishing the story until I’m happy with it, and in most cases it’s something completely different than what I started out with.”