About

Natalie working on a painting

Natalie Dixon is a self-taught artist based in London, UK. Her childhood mainly involved drawing pictures and writing words next to them; not much has changed. An early urge to express and tell stories led to an English degree, opening imaginary worlds but suppressing her visual side. In 2019, however, a personal crisis revealed that some things are beyond words. An emotional landscape unfolded, and she began painting in earnest, drawing on a palette discovered in earlier travels: the breadth and beauty of nature, and the world of visionary and psychedelic art. After attending workshops run by artists Daniel Mirante and Amanda Sage, she began a life-long work of integration, mapping nature to emotion, soul to matter, and stories to the human form.

Since 2020 her work has featured in several online exhibitions, including the 2021 Into the Wild exhibition hosted by The Artist Lounge, in which her work ‘In their arms’ was a semi-finalist. She exhibits in person at festivals (Something Different, Lovejam Campout, Anthropos) , enjoying the opportunity for inspiration and direct connection. Working in oils and acrylic, she explores the link between the outer world and inner truths, and the mythic nature of individual transformation.

Display at Anthropos festival

Artist statement

I paint in response to emotion. My paintings are acts of honesty that provoke honesty in turn: a real response in the viewer, a feeling or a memory. I paint because I can only understand my experiences through image-making, and want to transmit that understanding. Surrealism, fantastic realism, visionary art and Jungian psychology are all major influences because metaphor allows me to touch the personal and make it general. They help unveil the real magic of life. I endeavour to find the ‘archetype’ of the experience, and often switch between layered indirect techniques to communicate the numinous, and direct painting to express the concrete.

I also paint from a joy in the rhythm of the human body, and from a wonder at the shifting of light and shadow over a mountainside, and from grief at an achingly brilliant yet transient sky… It’s all emotion, manifested.

The story I take my scenes from is told by nature: the eternal cycle of death and rebirth, loss and healing. Through tonal contrasts and flowing lines, I convey the motion ever-present in our hearts and in the world around us, and always the potential for change.

Past events