ARTIST BIO

Natalie Dark, born 1990 in Miami, Florida, is a self-taught Cuban-American artist currently living in New York City. 

Most recently, Natalie’s work has been included in exhibitions at the historic Salmagundi Club in NYC, where she is a member, as well as at Harvard University’s University Place Gallery through the Cambridge Art Association. In 2019 she received the Audubon Artists, Inc. Award for her drawing, Casual Elegance, and was a finalist in the Art Renewal Center’s 14th Annual Salon (drawing category). Natalie’s piece Poder will be included in the upcoming American Women Artists’ 2020 Making Their Mark Exhibition at the Booth Western Art Museum, a Smithsonian Institution Affiliate, and has been awarded The Gargoyles Award for Work on Paper by the Salmagundi Club.

Natalie has a B.A. in Sociology from Stetson University, and an M.A. in Transnational Media & Globalization from City, University of London. She recently left a successful career as a consumer insights & market researcher in New York City to pursue art full-time.

Artist statement

Natalie’s work explores the concept of ethnic and cultural paradoxes. Having grown up bicultural, she has always felt a sense of fully belonging to both cultures, while never being fully included in either. “Too American for the Cubans, and too Hispanic for the Americans,” is how she describes the experience of moving through the world as an “in-between.” However, Natalie argues that she is simultaneously both and neither, and to an extent she is something completely unique. Through her hyperrealistic drawings, Natalie intends to bring the viewer into her world of paradoxes by using what is typically considered a “low-brow” medium – colored pencils – to create “high-brow” art. She hopes her work incites curiosity and a sense of contradiction in the viewer.

Select exhibitions, press, & awards

EXHIBITIONS:

2021

Junior & Scholarship Members Exhibition, Salmagundi Club, New York, NY

2020

American Women Artists 2020 Spring Online Juried Show

Making Their Mark: American Women Artists, Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA

Junior & Scholarship Members Exhibition, Salmagundi Club, New York, NY

2019

12th Annual Art About Agriculture, The Ag Art Alliance, Santa Paula Art Museum, Santa Paula, CA

41st Annual Open Exhibition in Painting, Sculpture & Graphics, Salmagundi Club, New York, NY

National Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

PRESS:

2020

Colored Pencil Magazine, Featured Artist of the Month, December 2020 Issue

All She Makes, Featured Artist Interview: Natalie Dark

2019

Pikchur Magazine, Issue 6

Sarah Mills, “Art As Meditation: Interview With Natalie Dark,” pp. 18-27, Create! Magazine, Issue 15

Natalie Dark, “Meet the Community That Nurtures My Art and Helps Me Build Resilience”, Everyday Health

2018

Featured Artist, Create! Magazine

Awards:

2021

Al Barker Award, Salmagundi Club Junior & Scholarship Member’s Exhibition, “Take Me To Capri”

2020

The Gargoyles Award for Work on Paper, Salmagundi Club Junior & Scholarship Member’s Exhibition, “Poder”

2019

Audubon Artists, Inc. Award, 41st Annual Salmagundi Club Open Exhibition in Painting, Sculpture & Graphics, “Casual Elegance”

Finalist, Drawing Category, 14th International ARC (Art Renewal Center) Salon Competition, “Casual Elegance”