Natalie McGuire
Natalie McGuire is a visual artist raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where a blend of cultural heritage and landscape shaped her way of seeing. With a mother of German descent and a father rooted in Minnesota, she grew up attentive to both tradition and curiosity. Family RV trips across the United States were formative, offering a slow, observational relationship to place through roadside views and backroads rather than destinations. Those experiences emphasized noticing over arriving.
Nature has long been central to McGuire’s work. Early influences included Ansel Adams and Bob Ross, whose PBS programs introduced her to the idea that landscapes could be both studied and felt. She studied under Paul Sinkler, Tom Hanly, and Tim Grey at Hennepin Technical College until the program closed, and considers herself largely self-taught, guided by direct experience and sustained engagement with the environments she photographs.
A pivotal moment occurred in the late 1990s along Lake Superior’s north shore. While collecting agates on a quiet beach, McGuire was repeatedly bitten by a horsefly and stepped into the cold water for relief. There, she noticed distorted, luminous stones beneath the surface and a delicate beam of light forming an S-shaped curve. She photographed the scene, and that encounter sparked a lasting commitment to capturing the emotional essence of natural moments. Since then, she has experimented with materials found in nature—rocks, driftwood, pinecones, dried flowers—and continues to question how far an image can be transformed through color, infrared, or material intervention without losing its core presence.
Her process is intuitive and exploratory. Carrying cameras into the landscape without predetermined goals, McGuire allows the environment to guide the narrative. This openness initiates what she calls her “Commando Photozaics,” works that merge fine art photography with sculptural mosaic framing. Each piece is technically distinct, requiring problem-solving across image-making, construction, and material layering.
The frames are integral to the work, extending the image rather than containing it. Glass rods, wooden sticks, and even everyday materials like popsicle sticks become narrative devices. In one Photozaic of the Golden Gate Bridge, glass rods accentuate the structure’s form; in others, hand-cut sticks suggest fence posts or rocky textures. These choices blur boundaries between photograph and object, inviting viewers to look beyond the image and engage tactually and imaginatively.
McGuire believes art can support healing of mind, body, and spirit, a conviction reinforced by audience response. Her piece Alone in the Fog—a minimalist photograph of a dock on a misted lake—was created on Mother’s Day and later exhibited with an accompanying story. When a viewer learned that McGuire’s mother had passed away that same day, the work became a shared moment of mourning and connection, affirming for the artist that images can carry what words cannot.
Looking ahead, McGuire aims to expand her practice through new landscapes and more immersive exhibitions that surround viewers and invite reflection. Whether experimenting with materials or revisiting familiar places with renewed attention, her work sustains a dialogue between human presence and the natural world.
