Louisville-born artist Natalie Westbrook embraces the spontaneity of working from the subconscious and direct observation of nature to create vivid paintings and sculptures that evoke the sublime.
The Pittsburgh-based artist’s new group of paintings – now on display at the Zynka Gallery – delve into the generative forces of life through an intricate interplay of baroque ornamentation, optical illusion, and sensorial abstraction.
Westbrook’s compositions are richly layered, balancing visual excess with formal restraint. Motifs drawn from both nature and architecture together reference dueling experiences of the world – one interior, and the other exterior.
The works take inspiration from a plethora of sources, including but not at all limited to leopard print, Peter Paul Rubens hunting scenes of the 16th and 17th centuries, Moondog, and an ocean of other musical inspiration, the fragility of monarch butterflies, and the persistence and vitality of invasive weeds.
The show title, “Corners of My Mind,” references a deep inner landscape and its relationship to the outward experience of a tactile environment engaged with the senses.
Illusion and material presence collide. Using palettes that oscillate between saturation and subtlety, sensory experience and representational cues enter into a fluid dialogue.
These artworks resist fixed meaning, instead enacting a fertile ambiguity that mirrors the very subject of fecundity—multiplicity, transformation, and the excesses of becoming.
Echoes of historical aesthetic traditions are recontextualized, challenging and expanding contemporary conversations around embodiment, beauty, and perception.
