Finitude, 2024, Oil on canvas, 20″ x 16″
Melted Candle, 2024, Oil on canvas, 12″ x 12″
Sowing, 2024, Oil on canvas, 24″ x 24″
Twenty, 2023, Oil on canvas, 18″ x 12″
Everything is Essentially Normal, 2024, Oil on canvas, 49″ x 58.5″
Natalie Leininger
[BFA] Studio Art – Painting
My work is centered around ideas and symbols of finitude: the state of having limits or bounds. Using objects such as candles, flowers, and portraiture, my work focuses on the reality of daily struggles that I am forced to live because of my autoimmune disease. In the candle paintings I use smoke trails, melting wax, and the coexistence of light and dark which resonate with the daily chronic pain in which my body holds. I aim to create a sense of believability for the viewer with a combination of both fast and slow paint movements on the canvas. Each aspect of my work is personal in terms of subject matter and all the details that I place within, but it is my hope that these details form a connection with the viewer, revealing universal truths in all our limits and bounds.
Bio
Natalie Leininger is completing a BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in painting at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her work has been included in exhibitions in the UNL’s Eisentrager-Howard Gallery. She also has published illustrations in the book Night Buddies and Evil School Bus #264. Leininger’s honors include the G & L Schleich Scholarship, Peter & Inge Worth Scholarship, Myers and Martha Cather Scholarship, and Joan Fiala Art Scholarship, and the 2019 Mayor’s Youth Art Award.