Natalia Sly

Born in London in 1986, I was brought up in Argentina and now live in Portugal. My work as an artist has always been in complement to my other work in the world—in Buenos Aires, as a director and curator of the art galley SlyZmud, and in Lisbon as a creative director and designer, creating cohesive visual worlds for clients with projects that include hotels and restaurants across the continent.

Color, form and space have always been central to the way in which I operate with the world, whether for outside clients or within my personal space. I search for an art to living, from the biggest ideas to the smallest arrangement of objects.

Since 2022, I have been focusing on my painting, and working independently from my design and consulting studio in Lisbon. As a painter, I make and relate to my paintings through Architecture, Color and Light.

ABOUT THE WORK

Taking inspiration from both the inexhaustible and inexact patterns of variation and repetition in nature, and the straight lines and right angles of architecture. Taking inspiration from all color, in both its tangible natural material expressions as well as mercurial emotional reverberations. The work flattens and layers the complexities of the world around it, seeking to capture its tensions within lines of demarcation and fibers of paper. The result is direct, forceful and vibrant. In groupings and assemblies, the pieces compel the gaze from one piece to another, and from one self-similar element within each piece to another, seeking and finding coherence and difference; discovering connections; slowing into an acknowledgment of each piece’s singular declaration within a relational and collective intelligence.