Robert Lange Studios will present The Ways We Dream of Home, a new solo exhibition by Charleston artist Nathan Durfee, opening Friday, October 2, from 5–8pm. The exhibition marks an extraordinary milestone: Durfee’s 20th solo exhibition with Robert Lange Studios, which has represented the artist for more than two decades.
Featuring a new collection of paintings in Durfee’s unmistakable style—a marriage of whimsy, narrative painting, and pop-surrealism—The Ways We Dream of Home explores the many places, people, memories, and imagined worlds in which we find a sense of belonging.
“Nathan and I essentially grew up together as artists,” says gallery owner Robert Lange. “We started working together when we were all very young and still figuring out what a gallery—or an art career—could look like. Twenty years and twenty solo shows later, I think the most remarkable thing is that Nathan’s world still feels completely alive. He continues to surprise us. You know immediately when you’re looking at a Nathan Durfee painting, but you never quite know where he’s going to take you.”
Durfee’s paintings have long occupied a world somewhere between childhood memory and grown-up introspection. His characters wander through oversized landscapes, balance atop impossible structures, encounter peculiar creatures, and embark on journeys whose destinations are rarely obvious. The work is playful at first glance, but beneath the humor and visual invention are questions about identity, connection, loneliness, courage, and our desire to belong.
“Home has always been an interesting idea to me because I don’t think it has to be a physical place,” says Durfee. “Sometimes home is a person. Sometimes it’s a memory. Sometimes it’s a version of yourself that you’re trying to find your way back to. I wanted these paintings to live somewhere inside all of those possibilities.”
A number of works in the exhibition will continue Durfee’s beloved “Dreamer” paintings, a recurring body of work featuring figures seemingly suspended between reality and imagination. These paintings have become an especially fitting vehicle for the exhibition’s theme, allowing Durfee to explore the strange interior landscapes we construct for ourselves.
“I’ve always loved the moment when a story stops being completely explainable,” Durfee says. “I want to give the viewer enough information to enter the painting, but not enough to tell them exactly what happened. The best paintings, for me, are the ones where everyone leaves with a slightly different story.”
That openness has been central to Durfee’s work throughout his career. Rather than illustrating a fixed narrative, his paintings often feel like pages torn from much larger stories—moments caught somewhere between what happened before and what might happen next.
“There’s a freedom in painting a world that doesn’t have to follow all of our rules,” Durfee says. “A tiny character can carry something enormous. A house can feel like a person. An animal can become a companion or a guide. Once you step into that kind of world, you can talk about very real things without having to describe them literally.”
For Robert Lange Studios, the exhibition also celebrates one of the gallery’s longest artist relationships. Durfee joined the gallery more than 20 years ago, and his evolution has unfolded alongside the gallery itself.
“There’s something incredibly special about getting to watch an artist build a visual language over decades,” Lange says. “Nathan hasn’t simply made hundreds of paintings—he’s built an entire universe. There are characters and ideas that disappear and return years later, themes that evolve as he evolves, and this wonderful thread of optimism that somehow survives through all of it. Twenty shows in, we’re still getting invited deeper into that world.”
At its heart, The Ways We Dream of Home is an exhibition about that search: for comfort, connection, familiarity, and the places—real or imagined—where we feel most ourselves.
“Maybe that’s what home is,” Durfee says. “Not necessarily the place where you started, but the place, person, or idea that makes you feel like you’ve arrived.”
