September 2023
INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION
Natalie Petrosky
ARTIST STATEMENT
I work in quite a few mediums in my artistic practice including video, cast glass, drawing, and installation. All of these mediums are driven by how I approach making paintings. My paintings are constructed from cut pillowcases and scarves that I tile together to make abstracted images. I want to elicit the feeling of future or past tender moments specifically with our possible relationships to the natural world, as I am influenced by my daily labor job as an ornamental gardener. I use paint between the splintered textiles as mortar or lead in an homage to mosaics and stained glass that do the work of storytelling and decoration simultaneously. I have a joy of pattern and color and I celebrate them in order to capture a person’s stare. In everything I make, I predominantly focus on the imagery and idea of windows in order to show how our eyes can occupy multiple spaces at once. A window is a defined and grounded frame that our eyes can physically be on one side of while also exploring the space on the other. I feel akin to Alma Thomas’ abstract paintings from later in her life when she speaks on looking out her window at the light changing in her garden. I enjoy the thought of how my body can be stuck inside one place, and my mind can take a walk in the woods.
Natalie is an artist living and working in Cleveland, OH. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing at the University of Tennessee and her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting with an Honors Thesis in Glass from the School of Art at Kent State University in Kent, OH. Natalie was born and raised in Akron, OH.
For inquiries contact the artists directly:
https://www.nataliepetrosky.com/
https://www.nataliepetrosky.com/