Hello and welcome to my brain…
My name is Marna and I am an neurodivergent artist living by the sea.
Who are you?
I was born in Middlesbrough in the North East of England in the 70’s, but grew up on the North Yorkshire National Park Moors, a stones throw away from Whitby, that landscape became my family. My safe place was nature and solitude with the moorland forms the base of all my work today.
Having spent my formative years living side by side so many very different types of environment, from the heavy industrial steel works & a Teesside chemical industry, to the small fishing villages clustered on the coast by the North Sea and a moorland made famous by Harry Potter and Heartbeat, experiencing those landscapes created a natural starting point for the inspiration of my paintings.
So what do you do then?
Communication and connection is at the forefront of my practise. I am fascinated by the emotional power of colour and use it to tell the story of my own internal landscape. Exploration through texture and form is a way of questioning my attitudes, my beliefs and my response to the outside world. I experiment with bold, saturated hues and unexpected colour combinations to create energy and movement.
I paint the emotion that the landscape produces upon me. Because my work is so heavily based on my emotional responses it often appears abstract and is not generally a direct representation of a specific scene. I do focus on the entire sensory experienceI get when I am out within the landscape and bring back those sounds, smells and the tactile nature of the landscape within my studio work. The rushing wind, the curlew calls, the crunching of the bracken and heather under foot, the rain on my face.
My preference is oil paint which I use in layers. I love the softness of the material and how it allows me to create exciting surfaces, using glazes, wax, carbon pencils and hog bristled brushes to etch into the buttery surface. I play with textures and hues, some complex, some limited, some cheerful and vibrant, some melancholy but all creating images of peaceful solitude and my experience within a landscape, whilst looking for ways to connect with the viewer.
Why subscribe?
Mainly a good reason to subscribe is because I am ace. I’m great at having a gossip and give excellent shopping advice, and also I’m rather open about my brain and the ways it tries to kill me and how I stop that from happening by looking at pretty things.
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