About the Running Stitch Series

At the end of 2010 I began making a new series of work in mixed media with encaustic that I call the Running Stitch. The works combine the sculptural qualities of wax with an accretion of elements to make semi-relief, loosely-geometric paintings that allude to the building up and wearing away of memory over time. By cutting strips from materials such as parts of old books, painted paper and cardboard, recycled rubber and patinated metal, I create a rigorous jumble of texture, color, reflectivity and material associations while making a new abstract arrangement with a rich physical presence. 

The many tacks I use to attach the elements to wooden panels superimpose a flexible grid and add a polyrhythmic undertone to the main horizontal or vertical orientation of the strips. Once I have completed construction, I begin to paint.  Pigmented encaustic not only adds color, it unifies the elements, and pumps up the muscularity of the composition by adding dimension and highlighting the organizing grid. Encaustic is the magic ingredient that turns the construction into a painting. The fact that I use a heated tool called a “shoe” to fuse the encaustic in the Running Stitch series is serendipity. 

From the Joanne Mattera art blog, July 21, 2011: 

If Nancy Natale is not known to the New York art world she should be. Her small solo show at Arden Gallery on Newbury Street is from a series of recent works called Running Stitch. There’s no thread in these constructed paintings, however. Composed of castoff book parts, rubber strips, metal and other materials, they have been laid out and tacked into assemblages that are equal parts formal beauty and polyrhythmic muscle. If I wanted to be flip I would say that Natale’s work is the love child of Lee Bontecou and El Anatsui. But that would be unfair to an artist who has forged a vision that is quite her own