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Publications
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Painters & Sculptors Make Prints Foreward (for artist book) Art in America Review of Exhibitions Intricate designs and serpentine forms occupy the fields of Natasha Sweeten's 15 small, subtle, oil-on-panel paintings.......Art in America >
Art: Chelsea The New York Times Art in Review Through March 11. Although they are abstract, Natasha Sweeten's fetchingly titled small oils on panel take cues from the real world, particularly from nature and architecture. What gives them their kick is her innate gift for using paint to evoke biomorphic and other forms in subtle, nuanced colors, overpainting, scraping and reworking until the forms play blithely off each other in quirky but coherent compositions......A very promising New York debut......Art in Review >
These paintings, all under three feet wide, are exquisite amalgams of surface, form, and color. Like Bill Jensen, a painter who can conjure deep emotion by scraping paint down to a whisper of pigment, Sweeten works oil paint in many thin layers while imbuing her broad, bold swaths of color and angled grids with an organic joie de vivre.
"Drawn to Cleveland" Another revelation is the playful work of Natasha Sweeten, whose painted and twisted paper sculptures are as inventive as they are fun....Drawn to Cleveland >
"I'm in Love with the Future Now" ......Natasha Sweeten works with the current dialect of abstract painting. A kind of loose and playful formalism is engaged. With a mix of organic and synthetic color Sweeten evokes vernacular architectures, like sheds, or compost fences, wood paneling, and trophy heads in a bar/tavern somewhere upstate. These works celebrate the structural conundrum of inside-outside painted space. Ultimately the space she develops is idiosyncratic-close to the space of something fermenting inside of a glass jar with a bright label on the outside. These paintings appear to be brewed, stewed, cooked, and caressed into being......I’m in Love with the Future Now >
"A Nourishing Summer Meal" Elsewhere in Chelsea, at Edward Thorp, the high points of an ecumenical selection included...By contrast, Natasha Sweeten's work was a discovery of the visit. The offkilter geometry and cartoon-y imagery of her generously scaled abstractions on wood announced her admiration for Thomas Nozkowski's inventive, intelligent paintings, but she gave the idiom a personal twist, largely because of her nice sense of the physicality of painting...... A Nourishing Summer Meal >
LEISURE/WEEKEND DESK ''GREETINGS FROM CHELSEA,'' Edward Thorp Gallery, through July 30. This interestingly varied, eight-person invitational includes Natasha Sweeten's suavely playful abstract paintings; Alexander Weiss's expressionistic portraits of Eve and Oedipus as blond Aryans; Matt Blackwell's antic, painterly, socio-political allegories; Alex Stein's densely penciled old master pastiches; Scott Geyer's simplified Photo Realist paintings; Markus Baenziger's delicately patterned skyward views of leaves and stars; Rebecca Smith's elegant and spare Constructivist-style sculptures; and Michael Ajerman's richly painterly watercolor portraits of young women.
"Twisting and Turning: Abstract Painting Now"
Arts & Life
The work of recent graduates from area art departments shows up frequently at galleries around town. But once artists leave Ohio, they often disappear from local galleries at the same time.....That's one reason the current show "Degrees of Separation" at C.A.C.P. Gallery is well worth a visit.....The paintings of Natasha Sweeten focus less on the feeling and appearance of downtown streets, and more on the way shapes and forms seem to randomly butt up against each other to create strange combinations.....Sweeten is acutely aware of her painting's surfaces and frequently exploits a variety of techniques to highlight their physicality. Individual shapes may be covered with heavily textural brushstrokes or made to appear perfectly smooth. Others seem to be created by scraping the paint with a palette knife. The overall effect is analogous to a diverse community of sorts, coexisting in a limited area......"Degrees of Separation" reunites >
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Natasha Sweeten at Edward Thorp
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