Natalie Karpushenko

My ideas start from nature and take shape when I add a human into the environment. I may notice the shape of a rock, and see how it mirrors the female figure. I may see an animal in its wild habitat and remember that we were once wild too. I may swim through plastic in the ocean and wonder how it feels to be a fish with trash in its home. My art is a result of my desire to reconnect with the natural world — especially through water, the element we all came from. My art is also a movement — to inspire appreciation and passion for taking care of our planet and ourselves.

In my photographs I strive to activate the imagination and open the eyes of the viewer up to the beauty we often do not see in the world, in humans, in ourselves. I like to take my viewer out of the reality they’re used to experiencing and help them see through a new, feeling lens. For example, the plastic in my photographs represents the impact humans have on the ocean — suffocating, not-meant-to-be-there. A human wrapped up, side by side a sperm whale who is vast, at home and free, shows how we’re all inhabiting & impacting this world together.

My art is a statement that we can find beauty in everything, and that in order to preserve and restore the beauty of our world, we must open our eyes to see things as they are — raw, real and natural. Not how we want to see them — enhanced, skewed, edited.