Nature As A Muse, Natalie Petrosky

Natalie Petrosky’s occupation as a gardener heavily influences her current work. Petrosky is often engaged in the meditative process of collecting sticks, rocks, and leaves which is reflected in the little bits of fabric that she collects and composes to form pictorial spaces. Petrosky employs the imagery of windows and fences in her paintings as frames for overgrown plants escaping and reclaiming their environments. The question of viewership is also addressed as we can peer through frames and windows, and occasionally the paintings and the natural world seem to perceive us back. 

The bones, stones, and seeds that comprise a natural environment can be combined into something greater than the sum of their parts. They contain many lives and possibilities and their appreciation often depends on the empty space between them. The negative space in my paintings gives the impression of a mosaic or stained glass windows but also of a forest canopy, the shattering of rocks, and the magical intermixing of all of nature’s elements.

Petrosky’s work offers up occasional Rorschach-like compositions that suggest nature’s symmetries, geometry, mysteries, seeming perfection, subtle irregularities, frayed edges, and unexpected mutations. She organizes botanical specimens and floral compositions that exist in conversation with their environments and not in precious bud vases. The gates and manmade structures that appear attempt to enclose, protect and contain nature. These are ultimately futile attempts at preserving plants, gardens, and ourselves from the ravages of time, theft, vandalism, predators, the elements, and other forces of the natural world.