ABOUT NATALIE

I've always been drawn to the quiet significance of everyday places.

Home is more than a physical location. It's something we create through memory, experience and the small rituals of daily life. The places we know best gradually become part of us, often without us even noticing.

My practice explores these relationships through craft, painting and abstraction. Handmaking through paint or thread allows me to spend time with a place, paying attention to details that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Rather than simply representing a landscape or building, I'm interested in expressing what it feels like to know a place and the connections we form with it over time.

My Practice

My work sits between observation, memory and making.

Projects begin with curation and photography, while many evolve through to repetitive stitching. Rather than working towards a fixed outcome, I allow materials and process to shape the work as it develops.

I'm particularly interested in how making itself can become a way of thinking, how ideas emerge through doing rather than existing fully formed before the work begins.

Alongside my studio practice, I'm completing a Master of Professional Creative Practice.

My research explores how slow-making practices, such as craft, deepen our relationship with place. Through everyday acts of making, I'm interested in how memory, material and lived experience become intertwined, allowing new understandings of home and belonging to emerge.

Rather than separating research from practice, I see each informing the other. The questions I ask in my research continue to shape the work I make in the studio, while the act of making often leads me towards ideas I hadn't anticipated.

Research

Exhibitions

My work has been exhibited throughout Hawke's Bay + NZ in galleries, community spaces and collaborative exhibitions.

Each exhibition becomes another way of exploring conversations around place, memory and belonging while inviting viewers to reflect on their own relationships with the places that have shaped them.

Artist C.V

Natalie Ngaio Rue Blackwood (Simpson)

b. 1985, Christchurch, NZ - Lives and works in Napier, Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand

Education

2007 - Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting (Hons), Massey University, Wellington, NZ

Selected Solo/Duo Exhibitions

2026 - Coming up - Masters exhibition - TBC
2026 - Heretaunga Women’s Centre, Hastings
2024 - Shirley, Pop-up exhibition, Atawhai, Taradale, Napier
2019 - Art House, The Rabbit Room Gallery with Richard Wotton, Napier
2016 - Flight, Franklin Community Gallery, Pukekohe

Selected Group Exhibitions

2025 - AAS25, Muse Gallery, Havelock North
2025 - Arts Trail Exhibition, Creative Arts Napier, Napier
2025 - Finalist, The Hawke’s Bay Arts Review, Creative Arts Napier, Napier
2025 - Hawke’s Bay Art Guide Exhibition, Creative Arts Napier, Napier and Arts Inc, Hastings
2024 - Arts Trail Exhibition, Creative Arts Napier, Napier
2024 - Hawke’s Bay Art Guide Exhibition, Arts Inc, Hastings
2023 - Harcourts Artex National Exhibition, Elephant Hill Winery, Hawke’s Bay
2023 - Hawke’s Bay Art Guide Showcase, Creative Arts Napier, Napier
2022 - Finalist, Changing Threads, Refinery Arts Space, Nelson
2021 - Orbital, Creative Arts Napier, Napier
2018 - Textile sampler for the exhibition X-Marks, Conversations in Cloth, Waitangi Treaty Grounds.
2016 - Made of Snow, Steel Gallery, Franklin Art Centre, Pukekohe

Workshops + Teaching

2026 - Stitching place - MTG
2024 - 2026 - Tutor at EIT
2023 - REcreate - Stitching for play - Hastings Sports Centre
2023 - Websites for creatives: 50 ideas to get you started, Creative Arts Napier
2021 - Kids and Teen embroidery workshops, Creative Arts Napier
2021 - Embroidery 101 and 102, Creative Arts Napier
2019 - Unframed artist series, The Pencil Room, Napier
2019 - Embroidery with Kids, MTG, Napier
2016 - Freestyle stitch, Franklin Art Centre, Pukekohe

Jewellery Collection

2012 - Dawn, hand-tatted lace jewellery

Memberships

Napier Weavers Club
Hawke’s Bay Arts Guide and trail
Former board member, Creative Arts Napier

Bibliography

Reviews/Blog features/Press

  • The Joy of Making, by Sacha McNeil for Thrive Magazine, print and online Issue Feb/Mar 2022

  • ‘Changing Threads’ Exhibition Catalogue by Refinery Arts Space, 2022

  • How to embroider your clothes, Of Small Matters, Aug 2021 (Also published in Ensemble)

  • Home Scene Journal Interview, Aug 2020

  • Create Whimsy Artist Spotlight interview, July 2020

  • Ravon about art "Flight | Rumours", July 2016

  • Tracey (Gadget Girl) "Flight...", July 2016

  • Felt Blog "Art in fibre", April 2016

  • Ravon about art "Made of Snow", Jan 2016

  • Muir, Matthew: "Black and other colours", The Gulf, Sep 2011, pg 36-37

  • Crane, Douglas (http://salient.org.nz/arts/visual-arts/visual-arts-2), 2008

  • Kenealy, Robyn E.: The Secret Life of Cream: Test pot, 2007 (http://artbash.co.nz/forums/reviews/the-secret-life-of-cream-testpot-new-paintings-by-ngaio-simpson-and-ri)

  • Bayfield High School, yearbook cover, 2002

  • Curated Rework - an art discussion group

Interviews (Audio)

  • A chat with Emma Bowyer Warner about my exhibition at Upcycle in 2011 on Waiheke Radio

Projects

  • Curated rework – an art discussion group -2014

Publication Design

  • BloodBowl Players Pack designer for Orc’s Bay Horn

  • Editor & graphic designer, Napier Boys’ High School ‘Scindian’ 2019 - 2021’

  • Editor & graphic designer, Newsletter, Napier Boys’ High School + Scinde House, 2019-2022