It began with the Milwaukee Art Museum and an Altoids tin. While in town, De Pere artist Nate Rose painted en plein air the beloved Calatrava wings on a tiny canvas inside the mints container. After spending days on larger projects, “it was nice to just go out and do a little painting in an hour,” he says. That little painting received lots of love online, so he started making more and posting them on Instagram.
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The subjects of Rose’s many miniature paintings span the whole state. He’s captured memories of closed spots in his native Green Bay, such as a roller rink or a recently shuttered supper club. He’s also documented offbeat landmarks like DeForest’s pink elephant and a tree painted like Bart Simpson. Cream City continues to be a source of inspiration as well, with recent creations including the Milwaukee Public Market and even the hippos at the Zoo.
“I’ll come down to Milwaukee with a plan,” Rose says. “I’ve noted all these places that I want to paint. I’ll take a week off from my day job and instead of going to Mexico, I’ll just go down to Milwaukee and paint all these weird roadside attractions.”
Rose’s art-making goes back to when he was a kid. At 5 years old, he won an art contest that sent him and his family to NASA’s Space Center in Houston. “I was sort of steered into art after that, because my family was like, ‘Yeah, win more trips!'” he says. It became a full-fledged hobby after he graduated high school, when he began painting abstract works and his pop-culture interests like retro gaming and Star Wars.
“It’s not my day job, so I can just do whatever I want and I don’t take it super seriously,” Rose says. When he’s not painting tiny, he’s creating larger still-lifes, landscapes, abstract patterns and portraits.
Capturing familiar Wisconsin locations on a small scale makes him see them from a different angle, he says, and that’s why he thinks his tiny paintings have resonated with others. “A lot of times people might not really have realized the beauty in a certain landmark.”
