Natalie Gauvin feels need to create
Natalie Gauvin is a painter whose home is testimony to her desire to create an environment that is better, new and different.
Painted on the open dining area’s two walls are ancient, earthy designs called “Spring Frescoes” copied from Greek ruins. Elsewhere in her home are old-world finishes and large impressionistic oil paintings of seascapes in muted tones.
Gauvin believes that our need for survival often overshadows our ability to create a life of productivity, beauty and awe. She has always had the desire to create her own world, not just live in it.
As a child, Gauvin learned how to dance and sing, designed and sewed clothing, and she built Barbie an apartment. Later, she learned to work with wood and metal. She has trained horses and dogs, and she has learned Russian. She believes all of those experiences have shaped what she does today as an artist.
Gauvin, 34, moved into her Liberty Lake home two years ago from San Diego, where she earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California San Diego in art history and criticism. She worked as a scenic artist for the San Diego Repertory Theater and as an artist for the La Jolla Playhouse.
Her portfolio includes realistic backgrounds for stage sets. Her hand-built iron furniture is complete with hand-sewn pillows in rich colors, and faux painting on ceilings and walls.
Her paintings contain a hint of urgency perhaps stemming from her desire to invent her surroundings and capture beauty.
“I think that a good piece of art is not only the physical that you find in natural beauty, but also the spiritual and metaphysical aspects that only the human touch can provide,” she said, “that which we cannot explain…and perhaps shouldn’t try.”
Since moving to Liberty Lake, she has established a place for herself in the art scene. She has found work at a handful of private homes and painted the walls at Caffe Liberte.
Gauvin also considers movement an art. She teaches yoga at the Liberty Lake Athletic Club and will teach dance in the future. She has become a member of the Valley Arts Council and will be hosting a spot on the Valley Studio Tour in October.
Her goals are to make a successful business out of her art, do beautiful murals and make more paintings.
Her hope for the future is that children do not lose what they are born with. “We are all born with the same basic tools to create a sense of life; a brain, a body, a human spirit. When we are not taught how to use these tools as children, we are often left to become searching adults on a lifelong quest to fill our souls with unhealthy mass.”
She wants children to march into adulthood with souls ready and full of skills, not just basic survival but reaching for something better and new and different.