Meet Nat Blooming of Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nat Blooming.

Hi Nat, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It would be easy for me to say that my story started in art school, but that isn’t quite true. Really my education was in learning and loving the language of storytelling, which for me happened at a very young age. As a kid I remember making zines with my sister and writing stories. Creativity felt very natural.

When I was in high school, I had this realization that it was the “outlier moments” that made reality tangible. Whether in composed music, writing, or painting, how the things that made work feel grounded maintain a certain atypicality. Because a day doesn’t just happen. A day is made of a thousand beautiful threads of every kind of material, and an artist just assembles the tapestry.

But, yes, okay, art school. I went to the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art, and got my undergrad in art education. It was intimidating to go from a sheltered upbringing to one that was so fundementally weird and vibrant. I grew up extremely religously, thinking everything was a sin. I went to art school and realized that my way of thinking was a microcosm, a tiny delicate blip on a map. I was like a goldfish dumped into the ocean.

My dad would always tell me that I would find the most intelligent people in the most unconventional places. And going to art school and meeting people my same age who were as dedicated to making work really made me rethink my whole life. My creative family really showed me the Possibility of Art. It stoked a lonely, hungry fire in my chest that understood that having a creative community was important, and in fact, maybe the best thing I could do for my soul.

From 2023 onwards, after graduation, I have joined a number of creative communities throughout Athens Georgia, mostly in writing. Transitioning from a painting to a writing mindset felt natural, because through painting I was already curating a creative world. Even when I paint, I want to understand the story behind a place or an idea. And I imagine myself sort of like a modern day cave-painter, narrating the reality of this world through brushstrokes and words into something beautiful and bizzare.

Living in Athens for a while has shaped me in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. The town is first and foremost, alive with music. I mean, literally dripping with that creative influence. You almost can’t understand the town without diving into the music scene. I have been to many houseshows, punk shows, the coolest things you will ever imagine happening in somebody’s backyard. I have danced and been my wild self with some of the most avante garde artists out there. The type who understand that to limit yourself creatively is a sort of unseen death.

The ability to express myself was (and is!) something that keeps me strong and feeling vital. I am still alive. I am still making work. I am still dancing to the music of the world. I am still trying to express myself in new ways while exploring the depths of myself. Whether I am known isn’t the point. I like to be known, but I like to be known for who I am first and foremost. I don’t know where I’m going or where my work will eventually take me, but I know that I need to keep moving, asking the world for stories, translating them. Because as long as I am patient and keep listening, they will come.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I’ve always had a tension around being an artist. I was taught that my need to be creative in an ordered, performance based world was a problem. This was from a young age, because my family saw creativity as dangerous. I think this comes from existing in a world where to be “different” from other people means that existing in society becomes harder. When you value creative expresion, you seperate yourself from a society which values normativity.

As an adult who works a day job to pay the bills, sometimes I feel like I’m living a split life. I also recognize the people around me as living split lives, where we all view a creative existence as something separate from our own experience. I’m always wondering where is the threshhold between the creative and noncreative realm is. And I think this is an artificial boundary. Choosing to be creative means that even the most mundane experience becomes a sort of creative revelation, an internal dialouge with the soul. When I talk about choosing creativity even in turbulence, I mean accepting that the choice of perservering is an artistic, creative desicion. Even if it feels too hard to pick up a paintbrush or string words together.

Being an artist through both the hard and easy times is the mission. There will always be a thousand reasons not to start a creative project. But it is important to recognize that that voice, although the internal dialogue of protection, only leads to stagnation and decay. It is absolutely paramount to continue embracing creativity, even in the darkest, coldest nights. Art can absolutely become a survival kit.

Finally, I want to recognize the people in my life who have helped me stoke the flames of my own creativity. I think art without community is dead, and the people who have helped me in various ways along my artistic journey by showing me their own beautiful creative selves have enabled me to recognize my own light. In that way, I think people are like torches. We help keep each other lit in times of hardship and disarray. I think a lot about art as a spiritual existence, and I’ve concluded that the artistic soul is like a hearth. We return to it when we are lost or broken, we allow it to fill us with radiant transformation. And we bring that light to others through creating things of value and meaning, not only on a tangible, physical level, but on a level of authenticity.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I write, I paint, and sometimes I make music. I think the borders between different art forms matter less and less the farther I travel down my creative path. For example, when I write I see the process of writing as a sort of verbal painting. When I make music, I like to record textures of Georgia nights, the sounds of fireworks exploding, the sounds of my relative’s voices. The process of imagining a world or scene is like drafting a map. It is possible to use art in the conjuration of anything imaginable, and the most important thing for me is that my art is telling a story. When I look towards other artists for inspiration, I think I’m most drawn to work which creates a vibrant universe.

In art school I learned to be an oil painter. At the time I began to think of each color as telling a story. Orange became purity, blue the projection of the divine. Green as a color of mutability and sensuality, and dark green as the definitive color of love. A little after art school I read Kandinsky’s book, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art,” which further emphasized my feeling that color alone could harness different states of being.

Right now, I am mostly painting monochromatically in blue and green, incorporating colors like pink and red into my paintings for some heat. Color is a huge part of my visual language, but I also love developing paintings thinking about the worlds my brushstrokes occupy. I like to paint familiar landscapes and environments, focusing on the strange, the supernatural, the spiritual. My grandmother and great-grandmother are and were both landscape painters, and strangely I feel like I’m falling into their shoes.

I am also developing multiple short stories. Some people that I know have referred to my work as “Southern Gothic.” Maybe this is to some degree accurate, but with the stipulation that my writing lives in a more speculative and fantastical place than what I think the traditional “Southern Gothic” is. I write to convey the world around me truthfully, and often the “truth” of my world is drowned in emotion and my life experiences. That’s okay. What I’m looking for, at the base of everything, is the most ungentrified version of myself.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Those who want to collaborate with me can reach me by the submission form on my website, natblooming.com. In terms of support, find my writing on constellationofthings.substack.com, and if you’re feeling inclined become one of my subscribers!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://natblooming.com
• Instagram: @nat_of_alia
• Other: https://constellationofthings.substack.com/

Image Credits
“Things She Hunted” (table with winged deer) – Photo credit by Hal York