Nathan Evans was born in Christchurch in 1972 and attended local schools. Self-taught, he began selling paintings in 1998. His first exhibition was at COCA in 2002. After concentrating initially on portraiture, he began to paint landscapes frequently based in and around the Banks Peninsula area. In these, he attempted to convey feeling and mood but also to problematise some of the assumptions of landscape art. More recently, he has returned to the human form with a series of nudes, as well as painting the occasional still life.