Natalie’s work explores the concept of ethnic and cultural paradoxes. Having grown up bicultural, she has always felt a sense of fully belonging to both cultures, while never being fully included in either. “Too American for the Cubans, and too Hispanic for the Americans” is how she describes experience of moving through the world as an “in-between.” However, Natalie argues that she is simultaneously both and neither, and to an extent she is something completely unique. Through her hyperrealistic drawings, Natalie intends to bring the viewer into her world of paradoxes by using what is typically considered a “lowbrow” medium – colored pencils – to create “highbrow” art. She hopes her work incites curiosity and a sense of contradiction in the viewer.