Library Street Collective is thrilled to present Natalie Wadlington’s first museum exhibition, Places That Grow, at Dallas Contemporary. Wadlington communicates the complexity of anthropomorphism, where our tendency to project human thoughts and feelings onto other species can be both beneficial in inspiring empathy in us to care for pets or support environmental causes, as well as detrimental in perpetuating a lack of knowledge about their unique social habits and needs. When it comes to human behavior and our treatment of animals and one another, we are simultaneously the most compassionate and cruelest species, the most loving and the most destructive. 

For her exhibition at Dallas Contemporary, Wadlington presents a new series of paintings depicting familiar characters, who come together in symbolic scenes that mirror humanity’s complex struggles in understanding and caring for mother earth. Inspired by the expansive and ever-changing sky in her new home state of Texas, the paintings appoint the celestial sphere as the covert protagonist and are set in all times of day, from dusk to dawn. 

The artist's institutional debut is curated by Emily Edwards, Assistant Curator at Dallas Contemporary.⁠ Says Edwards on Wadlington's work: “I was in love with these fantastical creatures, these figures that were so alive and so full of stories that I wanted to learn more about and spend time with. Creatures big and small, that all have these different tensions that filled me with wonder and also a little bit of fear. I was so drawn in that I could spend hours with these paintings."