About

My approach to art making is to slow time, to process an image through a medium that operates at a time crafted from hand-worked surfaces and natural materials.  

Natasha Norman is a visual artist that processes intuitive images of natural places in collaboration with hand-worked surfaces and materials. 

Natasha creates timeless meditative reflections on natural beauty. She is interested in art as the translation of an ‘event’ derived from literature, cinema or lived experience. She works within the lexicon of marks and colour described by watercolour inked woodcuts, thin planographic tones, carved woodgrain and lithographic brushwork. As such, her images are a material collaboration between the artist and her medium. Since studying in Japan, her work has become increasingly influenced by an interest in Wabi Sabi design principles that cherish moments of transient natural beauty and embrace imperfection and simplicity to guide a viewer’s imagination. 

Natasha graduated with an MFA from UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2011. She has attended two residencies in Japan to develop her knowledge of Japanese woodblock printing (Mokuhanga). She has exhibited widely throughout her career, most recently with her artist collective, The Mokuhanga Sisters, at the Kentler International Drawing Space in Brooklyn New York and at the Udatsu Paper and Craft Museum in Echizen City, Japan. She was presented by Salon91 Art Gallery at the Cape Town Art Fair in 2019. In 2023 she presented at the International Original Print Exhibition held by The Royal Society of Painter Printmakers at the Bankside Gallery in London. Her Mokuhanga prints were presented in the exhibition, Searching for Mokuhanga Light: Globalizing Japanese Woodblock Printmaking, that travelled to Cyprus and Hawaii in 2018. In 2019 Natasha co-founded Mokuhanga Kai, a society for the promotion of Japanese woodblock printing in South Africa to further access to and knowledge about this non-toxic print medium.

Natasha’s work has been included in various collections including The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The University of Cape Town’s Public Collection; The Art Bank of South Africa, The National Museum in Bloemfontein and Richard F. Brush Gallery at St Lawrence University, USA.

Natasha has lectured at various institutions and universities in South Africa and published as an independent writer. For a full list of exhibitions and project involvement please see her artist's CV.