Natalie Arnoldi (b. 1990) is an American artist and marine scientist based in Central California whose work explores the psychological and emotional space between abstraction and representation. Shaped by a childhood in Malibu and a lifelong connection to the ocean, Arnoldi creates large-scale oil paintings that hover at the edge of perception, inviting viewers to engage with ambiguity, atmosphere, and narrative.

Trained academically as a scientist, Arnoldi earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology, a Master of Science in Earth Systems, and a PhD in Marine Ecology from Stanford University. Her scientific background deeply informs her artistic practice, grounding her compositions in research while allowing for poetic interpretation. While her subjects often reference marine life and oceanic environments, they also extend to fog-laden cityscapes, abandoned structures, and remote landscapes, all unified by a restrained palette of blues and grays and a sense of suspended light.

Arnoldi’s paintings are ambitious in scale, evoking the vastness, power, and mystery of nature. Through environmental narratives and subtle visual cues, her work seeks not only to capture beauty but to foster awareness, curiosity, and reflection on humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Her work has been featured in over fifty exhibitions, including solo museum shows at the Bakersfield Museum and the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. Arnoldi continues to live and work in Central California, where her artistic and ecological pursuits remain closely intertwined.