My friend Natalie Dower, who has died aged 92, was a highly respected artist whose abstract paintings, sculpture and 3D reliefs featured in many notable exhibitions exploring Systems and Constructivist art from the early 1980s onwards, including Rhythm and Geometry at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich (2021).
Natalie was a wonderfully direct and inspiring person, whose work reflected a searching intelligence and true independence of character. An “artists’ artist”, she was deeply committed, painted every day and paid little attention to developing a public career. Paula Rego described her in the Art Newspaper in 2019 as one of the UK’s “most underrated” cultural figures.
She was born in London, the only child of Lavender (nee Clerk) and Col Alan Dower. Her father was the Conservative MP for Penrith and Cockermouth, and Natalie spent her early childhood at High Head Castle, in Cumbria, before becoming an unenthusiastic boarder at Benenden school in Kent. Trained at Camberwell School of Art (1949-52) and the Slade School of Fine Art (1952-54) in London, she made lifelong friendships with fellow artists including Craigie Aitchison, Patrick George and Rego.
Following art school she lived in Kent for 10 years with the painter Euan Uglow before moving to Morocco and later Estoril, in Portugal, where she established a studio in 1973.
While many of her contemporaries developed their work in relation to figurative traditions, Natalie took a different path. From the late 1960s she become increasingly influenced by the language of abstraction, crediting Malcolm Hughes for introducing her to a constructivist approach. She followed a personal, sometimes idiosyncratic route into systems art, producing a significant body of work over the next 50 years.
Natalie was highly experimental and never afraid to use new materials. Her work ranged from delicate, small-scale oils on panel and intricate painted wooden reliefs and sculpture, to majestic large-scale canvases and wall-based installations. She had solo exhibitions in London with, among others, Air Gallery, Curwen Gallery, Francis Graham Dixon Gallery, Jonathan Clark Fine Art and the Eagle Gallery/EMH Arts. In 2012 EMH Arts published Line of Enquiry, which traced her artistic development from 1947 onwards. She began showing in exhibitions that placed her work alongside that of much younger artists, who appreciated her influence and curated her into new contexts.
Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2018, she faced illness with great fortitude and continued to paint using preparatory drawings she had made in earlier years. Her deep appreciation of music continued over this time and brought her great comfort.
Natalie is survived by a cousin, Rosanna Westmacott.
