This artist’s work often features bridges, historic buildings, changing landscapes, and religious subjects. She paints with watercolor and acrylics, and she has painted the St. Louis arch from many different perspectives.
Natalie Schloss is a watercolor and acrylic artist with a studio at The Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles. Among her favorite subjects are historic buildings, the Missouri River at Frontier Park, religious subjects, the St. Louis arch, and natural landscapes.
She has painted the historic first St. Charles city hall building and the old post office.
She grew up in the St. Louis area, in a family of musicians, and attended college in Dallas. It was while she was away from her hometown that she started thinking of its landscapes. Her appreciation for the work of Monet informed her approach to her St. Louis-inspired paintings.
“He was famous for painting in series, portraying the same subjects in different lights and times and subjected to the changes in weather and seasons,” she says.
One wall of her studio features her interpretations of the St. Louis arch, all shown from different perspectives—the iconic view looking west from Illinois, framed between buildings downtown, some with trees, others with the entire frame filled with a single metallic leg from the giant structure.
Her works, incorporating watercolor and acrylic, often feature bridges, including the Eads Bridge and Chain of Rocks Bridge across the Mississippi River. She used a collage technique to build depth onto photographs of the bridge, even obtaining pieces of paint from the bridge for effect. She ground it up and mixed it with her paint, which resulted in a piece of art with a grainy texture.
As the seasons change, Natalie watches the Missouri River and appreciates how the view opens wide when the leaves have fallen to the ground and narrows when framed by springtime regrowth. She notes that the color palette shifts are continuous, like the river’s flow.
She has begun a series featuring the Missouri River from her studio windows.
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