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malibusurfsidenews.com Life & Arts
Malibu surfside news | July 13, 2016 | 19
Malibu native also paints waves,
jellyfish, other ocean scenes
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“I had this idea
of creating
these life-size
portraits of
great whites,
and I came
home and I
made them.”
Natalie Arnoldi —
Malibu native
As a woman entered the
largest room at Ace Gallery
in Beverly Hills on Thursday,
July 7, she stopped
briefly and expressed a
sense of wonder at what she
saw inside.
“This is a shark tank in
here,” the woman said.
“Wow.”
On the walls inside the
50-foot-wide room with
ceilings about 20 feet up
hung life-size oil paintings
of great white sharks. The
pieces were part of a new
exhibition of work called
“Below Sea Level” by Malibu
native Natalie Arnoldi
that will appear at Ace Gallery
until the end of August.
Arnoldi’s work is the result
of a marriage between
two of her passions: oil
painting and marine biology.
After high school, Arnoldi
attended Stanford University
and earned a bachelor’s in
marine biology and a master’s
in ocean science.
During her time in college,
she worked in a lab
that placed satellite tags on
great whites and tracked
their movements. Last fall,
while working in the same
lab, she regularly came face
to snout with 15- to 18-foot
great whites.
Then, something clicked.
“I had this idea of creating
these life-size portraits
of great whites, and I came
home and I made them,”
Arnoldi said.
The giant paintings depict
actual living sharks
that Arnoldi has studied,
she said. Other paintings in
the exhibition include pieces
depicting crashing ocean
waves and jellyfish. Arnoldi
also showed smaller
paintings of various ocean
landscapes.
The majority of Arnoldi’s
work in the exhibition
featured misty or cloudy
layers shrouding sharks or
ocean landscapes in her
paintings. Arnoldi said that
effect has a purpose.
“I find it really fascinating
to create a figurative
painting that is almost borderline
abstract,” Arnoldi
said. “The idea behind that
is giving the viewer enough
information to place you in
a specific time and place,
but leave enough ambiguity
that you have to fill in that
blank on your own.”
Arnoldi grew up in Little
Dume, spending her entire
childhood in Malibu surfing,
tidepooling and being
in the ocean, she said. Her
first encounter with sharks
came at a young age when
she would see hundreds of
leopard sharks, which are
Pictured is one of Malibu native Natalie Arnoldi’s lifesize
portraits of a great white shark that is part of a new
exhibition at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills. Alex Vejar/22nd
Century Media
about 4-5 feet long, while
looking over her surfboard.
“That had a very profound
influence on me at a
young age,” Arnoldi said.
“From the time I was about
8 years old, I wanted to be
a shark biologist. That’s all
I wanted to do.”
All that time spent in the
ocean at Little Dume and
in Malibu, where there are
many creative people and
lots of nature, contributed
to Arnoldi finding her two
passions.
“It got me involved in the
ocean both in an aesthetic
way and in a scientific, analytical
way,” Arnoldi said. “I
think Malibu was very influential
for me in being both
an artist and a scientist.”
Arnoldi said that while
she is currently only involved
in creating and
showing art, she is looking
into doctorate programs so
she can go back to school.
But her dream, she said,
is to find a way to work in
both ocean science and art
at the same time.
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