Natasha Martel
Food for Thought is an exhibition of small still life paintings of fruits and vegetables. As the price of food has been on a steady incline while the quality and size seems to be diminishing; I spend a lot of time thinking about the nutritional value of the food I eat. And I have accepted that unless I grow the food myself or buy it from local farmers, there are just some fruits and veggies that I will probably never eat again because they are too expensive, they support international trade and or they are genetically modified resulting in them having little to no taste or smell. I see this show as a small memorial for mostly fruits that I once loved and no longer purchase because of the aforementioned reasons. I hope this visual experience has provoked thoughts about our food supply chain and how you too can encourage sustainability by supporting our local farmers here in Vankleek Hill and the surrounding areas.
Artist Statement
Natasha Martel’s artistic practice focuses on the manipulation of materials and watching the process unfold into the final result. She is currently curious about working with negative space in the 2 dimensional plane. The teeter totter balancing act of stacking unlikely shapes on top of each other intrigues her. She sees this body of paintings as sketches for sculptures that are defying gravity.
Biography
Natasha Martel is a Canadian artist who paints, draws and pulls monoprints in Vankleek Hill, Ontario where she lives and works with her husband and beloved dog.
She studied Fine Arts at NSCAD University and graduated with an MFA in 2022. Since her return home, she has been teaching drawing and painting at the Dollard Center for the Arts. Natasha finds joy in developing her own curriculum and watching others learn, while simultaneously maintaining her own artistic practice in her live-in-studio.
Natasha was honored as the youngest female artist included in a survey of 33 Canadian Women Painters titled Interventions curated by Canadian painter Harold Klunder, held at The McClure Art Center (2018) in Montréal.
She has shown work across Canada. Notably Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia also internationally in San Antonio, Texas. She now offers commission work for your own personalized ideas to come to life! For more information on how to get started visit www.natashamartel.com
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