Nate Renner

Photo Courtesy of @Nate_Drinks_Busch.

Nate and I were driving between downtown Memphis and Clarkedale, Arkansas – I knew of a really beautiful cotton field I wanted to show him and the lighting was just right. He smiled as he told me a story (or perhaps more accurately, multiple stories) about his grandfather who lived on the far side of the Crowley’s Ridge, Carlisle to be specific, in an old sharecropper house.

He recalled some Sunday afternoons when Papaw would throw on his coat and nod to Nate. Together they’d ride, in an old bench seated Ford F-series, one county over – Papaw knew a guy who would sell beer on Sundays. It was dirt roads the entire trip, nearly an hour both ways. “He knew every dip and tire rut the whole way. I don’t think we ever even stopped a single time.” Nate described the smell, the crops, the rattles in the truck as though he’d been in the cab with him yesterday.

And that is precisely where Nate Renner’s art finds you; A place that you remember. A mark, an image, a pattern that draws from where you were or where you’ve been, manipulated to a place that shows where you are.

Nate Renner (@Nate_Drinks_Busch) is a neo-southern artist based in Memphis, Tennessee. His work focuses on imagery that draws upon his 1990’s upbringing in the hills of west Tennessee and the lowlands of east Arkansas.