Natalie Taylor

Pretty Brilliant Women in the Arts

Article

No. 38 • May 2025

For generations, the story of art has been told through a singular lens. When the first editions of canonical books like Janson’s History of Art and Gombrich’s The Story of Art were published, they featured zero women artists. The Pretty Brilliant: Women in the Arts series aims to make whole what has long been a one-sided story. In these issues, featuring 583 artists, we celebrate women who have always been creating, innovating, and inspiring, like Natalie Taylor.

Fig 1. Keepers of the Soil, Portrait of the artist, 2022. | Photo by Roberto Ricciuti

text: Catherine de Zegher

Passionate about the natural world Natalie Taylor (b. 1971), can be described as art activist, as a contemporary Artemis with bow and arrow. She loves the woods and the wonders within, the animals and insects, the fungi and the flowers. Yet, she wonders, if nothing is done to encourage protection and regeneration for the years to come, what will happen to the earth, to this fascinating habitat? As she says: ‘I feel driven to capture this raw emotion and use it to create something that can work towards change. As an artist, I believe I can address the climate crisis through my work both as an individual, and as part of wider collective action.’

Natalie Taylor

‘Having trained as a sculptor, I see potential within every material for communication. I love to push the boundaries of sculpture, by using living plants to “speak” to us through language written in flowers.’

Fig 2. Nathalie Taylor, Force of Nature, 2015, tapestry, 180 × 120 cm, collection Judy Riley | © Natalie Taylor, Pictoright, Netherlands

Based on scientific and historic research, her work ranges from drawings, sculptures with living plants to workshops, using materials as sustainably as possible. Here it is a tapestry titled Force of Nature that was digitally woven at the textile lab of the TextielMuseum in Tilburg, which offers technical assistance to artists with their state-of-the-art digital technology linked to a mechanical Jacquard loom.

The subject matter as well as the weaving technique concern a feminine tradition. In the tapestry, the artist replaced the tattoos on the Pictish woman’s body in the image that she had found by Jacques des Moyne de Morgues (1585) by flowers, and the face by a skull, as if to celebrate the power of woman and nature yet to also stress the enormity of the ecological crisis and to provoke soul searching and action – an image of both abundant, fertile life and death.

Natalie Taylor is featured in See All This #38: Pretty Brilliant Women in the Arts Vol. III. Order a copy here.