Natalie Colleen Gates was born in Indiana and grew up in the Northern Neck of Virginia. She has been a painter for as long as she can remember. She graduated with a BFA in Painting and Printmaking Cum Laude from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005 and has called Richmond home ever since. Shortly after graduating, she won the First Art 10 commission and created a series of lithography prints to represent the New York Youth Symphony. She also showed paintings at the Robert Rentz Gallery in Richmond before taking a ten year hiatus from art making. During that time, she organized two “TG Proms” at Diversity Richmond and wrote a memoir about her struggle with gender dysphoria. In 2016 she returned to painting and has focused primarily on scenes and architecture in and around Richmond. A general theme in her work is how cityscape and man-made structures contrast with, compliment, and exist within nature.