Nathaniel Mary Quinn Brim For Sale

About this work

Nathaniel Mary Quinn has emerged as one of the most compelling figures in contemporary portraiture, commanding significant attention from major institutions and private collectors alike. His work resides in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, cementing his position as an essential voice in twenty-first-century American art. Brim exemplifies Quinn's distinctive approach to the human face, where fragmented features coalesce into psychologically charged compositions. Working in his signature combination of black charcoal, gouache, and soft pastel on Coventry Vellum Paper, Quinn constructs a portrait that appears simultaneously fractured and whole. The title suggests both the edge of a hat and the notion of fullness, of something about to overflow. This duality pervades the work, as disparate facial elements drawn from memory, photographs, and imagination merge into a singular presence that feels at once familiar and unknowable. Quinn's technical mastery is evident in his seamless blending of media, creating passages of velvety darkness alongside areas of luminous color. The intimate scale of the work, measuring sixteen by thirteen inches, demands close viewing, drawing the observer into an encounter that feels deeply personal. Each transition between fragments reveals the artist's hand, his deliberate choices in assembling an identity from component parts. Born in Chicago and now based in New York, Quinn channels autobiography, collective memory, and the complexity of Black American experience into portraits that transcend traditional representation. Guy Hepner invites collectors to inquire about acquiring this significant work by one of the defining portraitists of his generation.