About Marilyn Wells Art Studio

 

Artist Statements  Exhibition Record  Teaching &Professional Experience

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MISSION STATEMENT:

Finding your heart and soul in sumi -e brushwork. I help artists and artistic souls get out of their heads or their linear way of thinking, and into their hearts. From there new ways of being can emerge.

To stop or interrupt your usual way of being can open you up to who you really are—because you are so much more than what you already know.

I find this very liberating. It’s really the ultimate freedom.

Marilyn Wells' lifetime of practicing and sharing art comes to your hands from Marilyn Wells Art Studio online store, with more images, story and resume on marilynwells.com

ARTIST STATEMENT:

In my abstract sumi-e art, I begin with a line of poetry, prose, or a piece of music. I want to know this concept on a deeper level of consciousness than the intellect alone. I go into my body. I listen to a deeper voice within me, not my head voice.

I get very quiet in front of a piece of rice paper and respond with my brush and my ink, out of this deeper space. The image is painted—almost, it seems, of its own accord.

When I share this artwork, I find the viewer also stops for a moment and does the same. As you sit with the work, something takes shape within you, resonates in your own depths. 

I want to engage you, the viewer, in what comes up for you. This is my invitation to you. The results often feel magical; you have been met; you have been heard yourself.

This work comes from a contemplative depth of meditation, both Zen Buddhist and Contemplative Christian, and from studying Zen artists, poets and Western abstract artists from Kokoschka through Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and all the abstract artists in between.

With my figurative Woman as Art, I find I long for color and thirst for line, and always have since my early childhood in rural Nebraska. I reveal the light held in the darkness of a gesture. I strive to reveal the inner light within women I paint. I reveal the divine illumination that carries us in an evolutionary spirituality and an eternal presence of Being. The essence of my work is Heart and Soul and I-Thou relationship.

I am inspired by poetry, prose and my own haiku. The written word usually provokes the image. At times, direct revelation in the form of an image appears in my mind whole and complete first, particularly in painting the feminine.

Most recently, my work with the Goddess figures in both painting and sculpture has been inspired by Neolithic figures. Nothing is more pure than the ancient Neolithic figures unearthed, housed now in museums, unsigned by forgotten artists. I find a heart connection with each artist whose work I am drawn to. I feel like we are touching hands across the centuries.

Life may not be a straight timeline. I am more inclined to believe God’s world is a circle, as the ancient Celts believed, according to John O’Donohue. I am closing the circle of time by coming back and joining hands with creators from these ancient, prehistoric times.

Contact me with any questions, for private sessions or Workshop information.

Links to specific areas of my expertise are supplied above my photo, top of page.

All works on this site are copyrighted by the artist and the artist alone.