Biography

Nat grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and now lives in Ferndale, Michigan. She has been creating art since childhood, but her formal training is in music, not visual art. She holds a BM in Clarinet Performance and MM in Music Education from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. She currently teaches middle and high school band, and she actively paints, sells, and exhibits her art in her community. You can find her work displayed at various Ferndale small businesses, and you can find her at local art fairs and markets. She works primarily in acrylic paints. Nat hopes her paintings give viewers a quiet place to be soft, to wonder, and to play.

Artist Statement

While painting is my most comfortable language, my formal training is in music; this background peeks through in my art’s movement, contrast, harmony, and occasional dissonance. 

Years before I became serious about visual art, my college clarinet professor structured a lesson around a painting on his office wall. It was a winding forest trail. He told me, “The reason I love this painting is that it goes somewhere; your music needs to go somewhere.” His advice was formative for me. At the time, I applied the idea musically, shaping lines and phrases to carry my listeners through a story. As I found painting, I kept striving to create art that moved, evident in shifting lines and perspectives, or in colors changing warmth with distance.

Color is a wonderfully playful musical element to me. In music, there are combinations of pitches in harmony that we expect to hear, and others that are surprising, maybe even unpleasant. The same is true for color. I use different color families to create a variety of moods, and I especially love to add the “wrong” color to palettes to add interest, tension, and motion.

As a musician and as a painter, I work to combine all these elements to tell compelling stories through sight and sound. As a creator, I imagine stories for everything, completing details in the world around me. Weaving these narratives makes me feel excited, joyful, and even playful about everyday life. Acrylic paint is my favorite storytelling medium because of how easily it lets me layer and blend bright, sometimes unexpected colors, to craft dramatic movement and harmonies. I hope my art captures your imagination and inspires you to create your own stories.