Natalie Lanese

Natalie Lanese makes abstract paintings, site-specific installations and collages that toy with perception of space. Relying on color, repetition, line, and collage techniques to push and pull on the picture plane, the resulting image manipulates and challenges spatial expectations. Creating rules as she goes, she makes decisions that are spontaneous and slightly measured, allowing for mistakes and corrections. DayGlo colors, a signature of the palette, challenge adjacent colors and disrupt what feels comfortable. After years of painting hard-edged patterns, slick geometric painting has eroded into gestural mark-making and layered textures. The marks are expressionistic, at times smooth and controlled, and sometimes demonstrating struggle and confrontation. The resulting punchy surfaces and dizzying color contrasts inhabit a shallow, optical space.

Ms. Lanese has exhibited her work at MOCA Tucson, the Akron Art Museum, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA, and has installed permanent public artworks in San Diego, Cincinnati, Toledo, and Cleveland, OH. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings. She has attended residencies at Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, Otis College of Art + Design, Sim Residency in Reykjavik, Casa Regis in Mosso, Italy and is the recipient of the Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award and the Arts Commission’s Merit Award. She lives and works in Cleveland, OH