“When I was about 10 my parents worked in the Potter County Courthouse. Dad was County Auditor. He took the job to help pay off the mortgage on the farm in the dirty thirties depression. The county seat was Gettysburg 2-1/2 miles away. At supper time we three boys would go to the east upstairs bedroom and watch for their headlights on Highway 212, a downward slope. It got so we knew their light over others. The speed. The time. In late November, the darkness, the barren trees bordering the pond, the shadows on the opposite wall. Through the elms a moving mosaic, accelerating as they came closer. It fascinated me. A lasting impression I wanted to explore, to tell stories on a sheet … Over the clothes drying rack in the kitchen; with candles, cut-out figures … shadows.With all the years since. The experiments. The tastes for adventure. The interruptions. The learning…there seems but two facts…story telling and replication (copying nature, styles) in my image.”

When Nauman came out of art school the big movement in America was regional art. "At that time," says Nauman, "the thing was to try to get next to an artist-n-residence, and I worked with Grant Wood at the University of Iowa." Nauman's work of this period was also influenced by Van Gogh and Cezanne. "My early art, mostly in acrylics and oils, was abstract and impressionistic and highly textural."