Nathlie Provosty was born in 1981 in Cincinnati, Ohio and studied painting and art history at Maryland Institute College of Art (BFA, 2004) and the University of Pennsylvania (MFA, 2007). The year between her education she lived in India as a Fulbright fellow. In the summer of 2007 she moved to New York. Her first one-person exhibition in the city opened in 2012 at an experimental artist-run gallery called 1:1, and since she has exhibited nationally and internationally including at Nathalie Karg Gallery in New York; A Palazzo Gallery in Italy; Jablonka Maruani Mercier Gallery in Belgium; and Stefan Lundgren Gallery in Spain. The artist’s distinctions include the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program studio residency.
Provosty’s work explores paradox with a particular attention to formal nuance. Known for highly sensual, abstract oil paintings that appear to be word forms, body fragments, or unidentifiable shapes, their ambiguities are grounded by an involved relationship to the materiality of paint and an investigation of color. Over time these works have opened into an expanded vocabulary of images and ideas. In 2016 Bill Goldston invited the artist to work with ULAE, where Provosty completed her first edition.
