About
Natalie Lanese’s paintings, collages, and installations are a visual jolt—layered, rhythmic, and unapologetically bold—transforming walls, spaces, and surfaces into optical experiences. Lanese has exhibited nationally at MOCA Tucson, the Akron Art Museum, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA, and internationally in Iceland and Italy. Her large-scale public artworks can be seen in San Diego, Cincinnati, Toledo, and Cleveland. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings and she is a two-time recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.
Lanese has participated in residencies at Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, Otis College of Art + Design, and SIM Residency in Reykjavík, Iceland, among others. Her work is included in several collections including Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, The Putnam Collection at Case Western Reserve University, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She earned her MFA from Pratt Institute, an MA from CWRU and the Cleveland Institute of Art, and a BA from Xavier University. She lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio.
Statement
I think of painting as an encounter rather than a fixed image: something that can be deceptive, physical, humorous, and discovered over time. I am interested in the moment when perception shifts—when something that initially appears flat reveals itself as dimensional, or something that looks hard turns out to be soft.
Inspired by Dazzle Camouflage, I use DayGlo color, high-contrast geometry, and layered optical surfaces to disrupt perception and destabilize depth, scale, and material. I am interested in illusion as a foundation of painting and in the surprise of discovering something that is not as it initially appears. Across painting, collage, relief, and installation, I explore how perception, material, and space shape an experience of abstraction.
Humor and play are central strategies. Soft forms evoke bodily shapes, inviting delight and laughter. Humor functions as both an entry point and a conceptual tool, destabilizing expectations and opening the work to a broad audience. Rooted in craft, pattern, and process, my work uses material experimentation to explore abstraction beyond the limitations of the picture plane.
Rather than remaining fixed, flat, and immediately legible, these forms extend into physical space and invite bodily engagement. Blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture, the work is process-driven and constantly evolving. By employing materials and techniques associated with craft and domestic labor, I embrace imperfection, softness, and humor as forms of visual and conceptual rigor. I seek to expand how painting can occupy space and how audiences can access abstraction.