Natalie Ryde

Natalie Ryde is a London-based painter with a cross-disciplinary art practice. Currently Artist-in-Residence for Bow Arts and previously at Kensington Palace and Tricycle Theatre, Natalie divides her time between her studio practice and educational work. Natalie works from Crawley Road Studios N22.

Ryde’s practice encompasses drawing, painting, printmaking, and object-making. United by an expanded drawing approach and often dominated by a densely drawn lattice network, Natalie’s work explores the dichotomy between theoretical explanations of life and the physical experience of living. It touches on reconciling her rational and emotional responses and accepting composite states.

Recent bodies of work have focused on large-scale paintings and smaller works on paper in acrylic ink. The repetitive build-up of woven lines in these layered drawings and paintings alludes to time on a momentary and continuing basis and as layers of history or distance into space. Hybridity often connects her work - a back-and-forth conversation between works in different media and dimensions. Her research is underpinned by close observation of nature, the world she encounters, and a hunger for knowledge across academic fields. Drawing for Ryde is a tool for research learning and a process to contemplate, reconstruct and reimagine the structures and forces behind and influencing the lived experience.