Body of work - Natasha Wright

As Dior’s provocative SS18 statement T-shirts, posing the question “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”, were hanging in its flagship Manhattan store, a New Zealand artist in New York was putting her own work on the line on the Lower East Side. Natasha Wright’s first solo show on graduating art school, the evocative Les Biches, was held at a small event space to critical acclaim.

A year on, Natasha is building on her portfolio of strong, spirited women. Preferring to work with oil paint on life-sized stretched canvas, she says her figures become physical beings – so large, and taking so long to dry, they cover the white-washed walls and floor of her Bushwick, Brooklyn, studio. They come to life during uninterrupted days and nights painting and gesturing in a camouflage jumpsuit. “It kind of consumes my life,” says Natasha of her love of art.

The inspirations behind her contemporary works are many and varied, from primal cave paintings and the voluptuous 30,000 BC sculpture Venus of Willendorf to fashion magazines and Cardi B – “unapologetic women” is the common theme. The strong shape of the female chromosome X can be found in many of Natasha’s compositions.

The artist believes her interest in the human body began with her undergraduate degree in fashion design at Massey University in her hometown of Auckland, which included a second-year exchange to the Parsons School of Design in New York. With an international career start, she worked with designer Karen Walker, as well as for major overseas brands at the Designer Management Agency.

“It’s a really exciting time to be a female artist. [But] I just want to be an artist.”

Natasha was busy travelling around Europe before settling in New York, for a second time, six years ago. Initially intending to stay for just a summer, she enrolled in a master of fine arts degree at The New York Studio School, which she completed with a prestigious scholarship, attracting a crucial network of artist friends along the way. As a co-founder of JMN Artists, a curatorial collaboration initiative, Natasha understands the benefits of a creative community.

This October, she opened her first exhibition back on home soil, Angels and Icons, at Parlour Projects in Hawkes Bay. It gave her followers the chance to see her textural work up close, which can look significantly different in person with glitter and sand often added to her canvas.

Natasha is a feminist, and while this instinctively imbues her work, she doesn’t want this to come accross too obvious or to become her only career interest. Emboldened by the recent rise in women artists, especially in NYC where her most recent solo exhibition Sista Chapel has shown, she knows what a privilege it is to forge her own path in bold brushstrokes – but there is still work to be done. “It’s a really exciting time to be a female artist,” she says. “[But] I just want to be an artist.” ■