Natalie has an extensive background in design, photography, visual and textile arts as well as being an art educator and a maker. Having studied Visual Arts at Ottawa University, and Textile Arts at Capilano University, she has practiced in her art studio in Roberts Creek since 2002, and works with natural and gathered materials, employing plant dyes and pigments, foraged botanicals, tannins and tea, metal, rust, printmaking techniques and stitching, on paper and cloth. She also develops courses and has been an art educator since 2004, teaching textile art and design at various art schools, such as the Maiwa School of Textiles. She has also exhibited her work in Montreal, Vancouver and Gibsons as well as been sought for private commissions. She is part of an artist collective (Samara Collective) formed in 2019, which were part of two artists in residency: a three month residency with the Sunshine Coast Arts Council in 2020 as well as a short residency in July 2021 with FibreWorks Gallery located in Madeira Park. They share a part time art practice in a joint studio located on the Sunshine Coast.

Natalie’s artwork is loosely defined by mapping out place and memory, as she creates textile assemblages in response to her surroundings, gathering forgotten or lost fragments of decay and making imprints that tell stories of life and its marks. “I am interested in the combination of discarded, decaying elements as scraps of evidence with patterning that suggest traces of life, infused with connections to nature, plants, an inventory of abstract trails and fugitive moments on surfaces and structure.”