Location: United States
MFA, Painting and Drawing, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 2002
Educated formally as both a visual artist and an art historian, Marcia has been influenced by diverse styles, especially American and French art. She enjoys sharing her passion for art with her students as a college art instructor and mentor to aspiring women artists through Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota (WARM).
Marcia paints abstract works, as well as abstracted landscapes in small and large formats. Her works are visual metaphors for states of mind and emotion, conveyed through abstract imagery associated with water, fire, air and vegetation. The body of work implies the hidden dichotomy of life, that almost nothing is all good or all bad.
Her work is included in the traveling exhibition, "Women and Water Rights" (2010-2012) juried by international art critic and writer, Lucy Lippard, and has been shown in numerous solo and juried group exhibitions.
Marcia's work has been published in "International Contemporary Artists" (ICA Pub., 2011), "Studio Visit" (Vol. 9, 2010) and "Exploring TOSCA" (Summer 2011) and is in a number of public and private collections, including the Boynton Health Services Art Collection at the University of MInnesota, Minneapolis.
Global events of recent years, war, environmental disaster, global warming, economic collapse, and our increasing awareness through global media of widespread poverty, preventable disease, and starvation affecting millions of people worldwide, especially children, are our cultural 'nightmares' ("Les cauchemars")--the 'darkness' which forms the context for this body of work. As scientists seriously plan how to actualize human landings on Mars, the red planet, will we take our garbage, our disease, our warfare and our environmental poisoning with us to this new world? Or can we find some way to live in peace, with universal healthcare, without gluttony and vast economic disparity? The human race is weighed down by these nightmares. Will we find the common will, the determination (the 'fire-in-the-belly') to work for global solutions for these problems, and find our way out of darkness to the light of environmental and political healing. "Les cauchemars" began as an angry response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast, but with the desire to fight for healing of our waters and environment. Much of the work in this portfolio reflects this dichotomy. The "Solar Series" paintings (2003-2006) were in response to solar flares in 2003 which caused widespread blackouts on the East Coast. Much of my work is a response to visiting Iguacu Falls, Argentina, the widest series of waterfalls in the world, at the confluence of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. It is one of the most magnificently beautiful places in all the world, with the thunderous roar of the falls, and prisms of color--rainbows in the mist--everywhere you look. It has been described as the 'closest thing to heaven on earth.' Yet it too has been subject to severe drought and a two-thirds reduction of the flow of the falls in 2008 due to global warming. Its great beauty is in stark contrast to its bloody history of colonization and the near-decimation of the indigenous Guarani people in the mid-18th century by colonialist forces of the Portuguese and Spanish monarchy and Rome. "Iguacu Falls: the River is Red" is a response to the vast multi-colored beauty of the falls, the fact that iron in the water makes the river basin a bright red-orange, and a reference to its bloody history. The "Vapor Series" of 2012 are visual metaphors for trying to pull ourselves as a society out of darkness, to raise ourselves up to hope and healing.
Water is an ebb and flow, back and forth in constant motion, just as life, very existence, is an ebb and flow, the human heartbeat as well as breathing always increase, then decrease, and again.
The sun is life-giver and life-destroyer. This is one in a series of six paintings I did in 2003-2006 about the metaphoric power of the sun, and a series of solar flares that caused major blackouts on the East Coast. Fire and light are also visual metaphors in my work for heart and spirit.
This is the final image in the "Solar Series."
Solar Series #5 seems to evoke a rudimentary human figure looking out at the viewer.
"Untitled Abstraction" evokes night and landscape, an indeterminate place.
“Iguacu Falls, The River is Red”
Iguacu Falls, Argentina is the widest series of waterfalls in the world and a stunningly beautiful place. You stand surrounded by prisms of colored light everywhere you look and are enveloped in its constant, thunderous roar. You are puny in the face of such a mighty place. But for a place so beautiful its history is marred by a bloody colonialist past when through the intrigue of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies and the Catholic Church, mercenaries were hired to almost wipe out the indigenous Guarani people. The red in the painting is symbolic of the red-orange river basin, caused by an abundance of iron in the water, and the bloodshed of Iguacu's history.
Red Vapor is part of the recent "Vapor Series," evoking burning bright light, pulling one's mind and spirit out of the depths of the despair and darkness of our global nightmares.
White Vapor and the next image reference the mists of Iguacu Falls, serving as visual metaphors for peace and healing.
Iguacu Falls Vapor evokes the ethereal mists of the falls, and serves as a metaphor for healing. In this portfolio, we have come full circle out of darkness from the depths of fear and anger over the many nightmarish problems our world is facing to a clear calm state of mind at peace with itself and its world.
“Les cauchemars (Fire-in-the-Belly)”
“Ebb & Flow”
“Solar Series #3”
“Solar Series #6”
“Solar Series #5”
“Untitled Abstraction”
“Red Vapor (Captured Light)”
“White Vapor”
“Iguacu Falls Vapor”
