Natalie Maxted is an American, British and Finnish painter working in acrylic on canvas. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, she lives and works in the United States. Her large-scale figurative portraits have been exhibited internationally, with works held in private collections across the US, UK, and Europe.

Working exclusively by hand, Maxted’s paintings examine what happens to the human image after its endless reproduction through screens, photography, and digital culture. Her work exists at the intersection of pop art, portraiture, and contemporary image theory, translating the visual language of modern media back into singular painted form.

Her subjects are overwhelmingly women, not as passive objects of observation, but as psychological and self-possessed presences. The gaze in her work does not perform for the viewer. It appraises.

In an era where images are infinite and disposable, Maxted’s paintings insist on the authority of the painted surface: slow, physical, deliberate, and unable to be scrolled past. Gesture, distortion, cropping, and graphic flatness become tools for examining femininity, performance, beauty, and perception in contemporary life.

After studying Art History and Classical Studies at the University of St Andrews and the University of Warwick/IESA in Paris and London, Maxted worked at Christie's London before committing fully to studio practice. Her work has been selected to exhibit at Artexpo New York, Red Dot Art Fair Miami, Monaco Art Fair, and Agora Gallery, Chelsea, New York, where her painting Eating is one of four to be included in group exhibition Summer City Idyll (July 2026). Her painting Light and Dark was selected as a finalist for the Chaiya Art Awards' God Is... exhibition and exhibited at London’s OXO Tower. Her work Pathogen was described by the Cambridge Independent as "Testing the Nation's Temperature." She takes a limited number of private commissions annually.