Natalie Niblack, Raven, oil on linen, 20 x 24 in, 2026

March 5th - March 29th

Artist Reception : Saturday, March 7th, 5 - 7pm

Artist Talk : Saturday, March 21st, 4 pm, with poet Holly J. Hughes

i.e. gallery is pleased to welcome back Natalie Niblack for her third solo exhibit with us.

While living on the banks of the Skagit River since 2000, Niblack has become a keen observer of the pressures of conflicting demands on a fragile landscape. Her work has come to reflect accelerated change in our culture - change in the climate, environment, politics, and social justice.

"I have always made work about what disturbs me, from my own internal dialogue ,to climate change, to politics. In translating that disturbance into art, I derive great joy from learning new materials and techniques, and choose my media to suit the subjects. This is why I feel comfortable lampooning political figures in ceramics while simultaneously painting portraits of threatened birds and oil train explosions".

She asks the viewer to recognize the consequences of our relationship with the environment, and the choices we have collectively made that are inevitably altering the world around us. Her 2024 exhibit with i.e. "66 Birds/3 degrees", lovingly painted portraits of the birds we would lose if our temperature increases by 3', is still traveling throughout the Pacific Northwest complete with sound installation. Her most recent work for "The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly" focuses on those birds most maligned or disregarded and will be shown alongside the ceramic characterization of the figures rampant in our current political climate.

Niblack is committed to exhibiting work in rural public spaces where challenging work in rarely seen, especially in the Pacific Northwest. She feels it is important to bring the conversation about climate to as many places as possible. She received an MFA from Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland in 1993, and has shown her work in solo and group shows internationally, nationally and regionally. In 2024 she was awarded the SOLA Grant from the Artist Trust of Seattle.