Artist: Marie Natale
In Marie Natale’s childhood home, making things by hand was part of life.
Her grandmother sewed clothes. Her mother embroidered the linens. Her father played music. Creativity wasn’t a hobby. It was how the family got things done.
Still, the first time she saw art as something more, she was 5. A Canadian cousin came to visit and brought a landscape she’d painted of the bay near the family’s village in Quebec.
Marie recognized it instantly: the church, the water, the quiet shoreline where she played on summer visits. It was all there, captured in brushstrokes.
“It was the emotion of memory,” says Marie, 72. “I saw exactly what she painted. I knew that place, and I thought that was really something amazing.”
That moment planted a seed. A few years later, a teacher pulled Marie aside with words she never forgot: “You’ve got real talent.”
Artist: Marie Natale
It was the first time art called to her, not just as something beautiful, but as something she could do. That sense has stayed with her ever since.
Now an award-winning watercolorist and art educator, Marie is the matriarch of a sprawling South Jersey family of creatives – the kind of family where everyone makes something, whether they call it art or not.
Her father, Joe Natale, played accordion professionally, often performing at Cherry Hill’s legendary Latin Casino in its heyday.
Her mother and grandmother both took up painting later in life, continuing a long tradition of making things by hand, from sewing clothes to embroidering linens. And even further down the lineage, her grandfather Alonzo Bouchard was a carpenter in Quebec – and also a performer in community musicals.
“I think that’s why the art gene is so strong in our family,” Marie says. “It wasn’t just painting. It was music, it was building, it was performing. Creativity was all around us.”
That legacy will be on full display this fall at Casciano Coffee Bar & Sweetery in Hammonton – the family’s go-to creative gathering spot – where their third annual show, Creative Inheritance: One Family’s Art Legacy, opens Nov. 7. It brings together three generations of artists.
Marie’s watercolors will hang alongside work by her sister Mila Klick, who hand-paints holiday ornaments; her nephew Mark Natale, known for oil paintings of South Jersey landmarks; and her niece (Mila’s daughter) Marissa Klick, a former designer for Nickelodeon whose bold style blends graphic illustration and storytelling.
That artistic legacy is something her nephew Mark feels, too, not just in family history, but in the ongoing connection they all share through their work.
“There’s this fun, creative energy that exists,” he says. “We’re all doing something a little different, but that’s what’s cool about it.”
It’s not something they talk about much, but it’s always there, especially when the family comes together to exhibit.
“We’re not in constant contact about our art,” adds the Barrington resident. “But we follow each other. I’ll see something Marissa posts and think, ‘Wow, that’s really cool.’ We comment on each other’s work. That’s how we stay connected.”
The Artist as Matriarch
The artistic roots run deep in South Jersey, where Marie’s grandparents settled in the 1930s. Her great-grandfather built a full roadside stop along the White Horse Pike in Mullica Twp., a gas station with a café and tiny cabins for travelers heading to the Shore.
It was a launching pad for the next generation, who grew up observing their parents turn scrap into solutions, always figuring out how to make what they needed by hand, Marie recalls.
Watercolor was her love and her signature.
“What I look for is light,” says Marie, who earned her master’s degree in art from Rowan University when it was still Glassboro State. “The brilliance of it, the reflections. That’s what connects me most.”
But selling art takes more than making something beautiful or compelling.
“I’ve never not made money as an artist,” she says. “You can’t wait for people to knock on your door and say, ‘Hey, I want to buy a painting.’ They don’t even know who you are. You’ve got to put yourself out there.”
She built her reputation through years of hands-on teaching, first in public schools, then leading workshops at art centers and community colleges along the East Coast. She ran a children’s clothing line and later designed gift products sold in national chains like Walmart and Lowe’s.
Today, she teaches three watercolor classes a week from her home studio over Zoom. Her students come from as far away as Canada and Dubai.
Many have gone on to win awards and join national watercolor societies. “I’m known for teaching them how to paint people,” she says. “And I’m so proud of them. They really want to learn.”
Artist: Mark Natale
Painting the Past
For Mark, art was always part of the atmosphere growing up. It wasn’t in a formal sense, but in the way his father and uncles worked with their hands, building furniture, restoring cars, crafting whatever was needed from scraps in the garage. Art materials were always around too.
“We’d gather at my grandparents’ house, and there would be art supplies out on the table,” he says. “There was always something to make.”
His biggest influence was his father, David Natale, who turned a passion for scale modeling into a thriving online business. David crafted miniature trucks modeled after real-life rigs – right down to the decals and hardware – often using household materials in inventive ways.
“He could turn a piece of spiral pasta into a drill bit, or a brown paper bag into a bundle of shingles,” says Mark. “He was always figuring out how to make something look real.”
David eventually launched a mail-order business selling model kits and custom parts. Mark helped with the digital side, while his father ran the physical production. What left the deepest impression was the discipline behind the craft, Mark recalls.
“It taught me how to see,” he says. “Not just the object, but how it’s built. How materials come together. Why something feels solid and lasting.”
Like Marie, it was a teacher who saw his potential and pushed him to pursue it. He went on to study graphic design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Today, Mark is best known for his hyper-realistic oil paintings that document the visual DNA of South Jersey: roadside produce stands, faded storefront signs, and forgotten stretches of the White Horse Pike.
The work draws on his design training, but with a warmth and nostalgia that defies digital slickness.
“I like the handmade quality of these old signs. You can see someone’s brushstrokes in the lettering,” he adds. “They’re not perfect, and that’s what makes them beautiful.”
He began his signature White Horse Pike series more than a decade ago, including depictions of the giant neon pin in front of the still-operating 30 Strikes bowling alley in Stratford. There’s also the sign for the no longer existing Farmer’s Daughter. This farm shop, in business for decades in Hammonton, was known for the cartoonish depiction of a young woman in cut-off shorts and shirt.
In 2020, his work was featured in SJ Magazine just as the Covid shutdown halted business as usual, including art exhibitions. He then paused the series soon after to help run his father’s business and, later, to manage the estate after David passed.
Mark has recently returned to a painting he started years ago, a portrait of the Ideal Fashions sign, once perched atop a domed building in downtown Hammonton where he remembers shopping with his grandmother. Just as he picked the piece back up, the real sign vanished.
“One day it was just down,” he says. “Then I passed it on a trailer, going the opposite direction. It was surreal.”
A few weeks later, he spotted it again in the yard of a sign company near his home, but it disappeared before he could stop. It’s present whereabouts are unknown.
“It was there for a hot minute, then gone,” he says. “It’s like it kept following me.”
Artist: Mila Klick
Artist: Marissa Klick
Creative Threads
The mother-daughter duo of Mila and Marissa Klick represents 2 more branches of the family tree.
Mila, Marie’s younger sister, worked as a designer for the Franklin Mint before shifting focus to her creations. She now hand-paints whimsical holiday ornaments – tiny elves, snowmen, animals and nutcrackers – each one uniquely detailed and posed. What began as a pandemic hobby has blossomed into a growing business. Like her sister, Mila works from a home studio and has built a loyal following through word of mouth and small craft fairs.
Artist: Marissa Klick
Her daughter Marissa represents the youngest generation in the show and a leap in medium, though not in spirit. A Philly-based illustrator and former Nickelodeon designer, Marissa blends digital and traditional art, drawing on folk-art inspiration and what she describes as “a child-like sense of wonder with the world around her.”
Her prints and sculptures, sold on Etsy and her website, are vibrant, quirky and full of whimsy, featuring unicorns, mermaids and other playful characters.
For Marie, seeing everyone’s work come together in the same space is both emotional and affirming, a reminder that the family’s creative spark isn’t just inherited, it’s shared.
“Marissa’s got a style all her own,” Marie says of her niece. “But you can see it, that same energy, that same spark. It’s in all of us.”
