ABOUT
@bu_graphicdesign
@bostonpainting
@pmp.bu
@bostonsculpture
@buvisualnarrative
she/her
Natalie Conway
I want to give shape to my inner thought world—the stuff I can’t capture in words. Using color and gesture intuitively, I create dense, layered paintings through a multitude of experimental processes. Bits of recognizable imagery and text point to my preoccupations with childhood, femininity, spirituality, science, and education, while more abstract forms invite free association. Made on sturdy wooden supports, the surfaces and edges of these paintings reveal a history of deposition and erasure, rendering them objects as much as images.
My practice begins with remnants and fragments I collect with no end in mind: scraps of wood, dried-up chunks of gesso, trinkets, and trash, along with doodles, word lists, and photos of the ground taken during walks. Scavenging and salvaging are vital to my lifestyle, and these activities provide the raw material for my creative practice. In the additive stage of putting paint to a surface, I see myself collaborating with chance and entropy, welcoming in whatever captures my attention.
Such openness entails overwhelming accumulation. I have to find ways to recover the most important forms that have been buried, which I do through physical excavation like scraping, sanding, and polishing. All done by hand, this careful but extensive labor becomes another opportunity for discovery, yielding cross sections reminiscent of geological, biological, and archaeological samples. Such specimens do serve as sources of inspiration, but also point to the ways in which my process affects my body: the compression and abrasion of materials wear on my skin, ligaments, and bones.
Though the wounds and aches force me to attend to my age and present condition, my practice helps me rekindle a youthful sense of creativity. The accrual and removal of layers mirrors the nonlinear process of personal growth, in which unlearning is just as important as learning, and healing means bearing scars.
Gesso and acrylic paint on wooden board, 17 × 11 in.
Gesso and acrylic paint on plywood panel, 4¾ × 7¼ in.
Gesso and acrylic paint on wooden board, 4½ × 6½ in.
10 parts: gesso, acrylic, eggshells and mica on wood boards
and panels, each 15 × 29 in.
Gesso, acrylic, and oil on cradled plywood panel, 14 × 19 in.