Posted By Natalie Keller on Jan 20, 2014

By Natalie Keller

Artist Natalie Keller

The Artists’ Loft will be a monthly featured article in which I will investigate different art techniques and venues with accompanying interviews when appropriate. I will be doing what I love best…learning more about art and hopefully passing on some “tid bits” of knowledge to other artists and art lovers.

You may recognize my name since I wrote articles on psychology for the Peak at the Peak for numerous years. I retired from my practice Pinnacle Coaching & Counseling in 2010 and began painting again. I spent most of my life drawing and painting even though I worked as a surgical nurse and later as a psychological counselor.

Early in my life, I attended the Arizona School of Art where I took classes in life drawing and painted my first portraits. Unfortunately, the school has been closed for many years. I took numerous lessons through out the years and devoured many art books to learn and improve my artistic techniques…I loved learning everything about creating a painting! I stretched my own canvases and prepared them with Rabbit Skin Glue. What a smelly process! It’s much easier now to buy gesso or just buy the canvas already prepared…why reinvent the wheel!

Later in life, I moved around a lot due to my husband’s career. We moved from the mainland USA for eleven years. I painted daily while living abroad and eventually had three exhibitions…three in Switzerland and one in Singapore where the Honorable, J. Stapleton Roy, the Ambassador to Singapore opened my show. I tell you this so you’ll know that I have been around art most of my life.

Recently, I have been painting Western and Native American Indians. I paint in a traditional realistic style but I also have experimented with painting impressionistic. One of my rodeo paintings from the Cave Creek Rodeo was chosen by the Scottsdale Gallery Association for a poster displayed for a year on the Kiosk on 5th and Main Street. I am associated with the Fountain Hills Artists’ Gallery located on Avenue of the Fountains and the On The Edge Gallery located on 5th and Marshall. Earlier, I was associated with Treasures in Art on the corner of Pinnacle Peak and Pima Road.

From February 18 through March 4 I am having an exhibition in Fountain Hills at Fountainside Arts. There will be an artists’ reception on February 23 from 2pm to 6pm. The public is welcome and I hope you can make it.

We are so lucky to live in an area with many art galleries and art venues.There are so many different styles of creativity you can find anything you desire. We have numerous art leagues and in the Sonoran Art League alone there are over 400 members. If you didn’t attend Hidden in the Hills this year you missed a wonderful opportunity to see and buy some beautiful art. I’ll remind you next November.

I’m always curious about the different styles and processes that artists use to get to their final creation. I hope to write about some of the unusual ones and about art in general. I’m looking forward to writing this monthly article and If you have any art questions or requests just write to the Peak at the Peak. If I don’t know the answer I’ll find someone who does!

In the meantime, I hope you keep reading and supporting the Peak at the Peak magazine and look forward to seeing who’s in the Artists’ Loft!