@marinaveenfineart

www.marinaveenstudio.com

Marina Veen masterfully blends the rich tapestry of her cultural heritage into a vibrant expression of contemporary art. Born in Odessa, Ukraine, she blends the energies and cultures of places she spent her adulthood in: the vibrant energy of New York, the artistic spirit of California's Bay Area, the vivid yet rugged Pacific Northwest nature of Seattle and the warmth and wind of tropical Florida.

She made a shift from a two-decade career in enterprise technology towards her true calling: creative practice and art education. Marina credits the immense power of art and the daily act of art making for nurturing her through the pandemic and beyond. Whether in her art studio or volunteering art instructions with local public schools and libraries, she is on the mission to share the power of art and the joys of creation with her community.

In Marina's world, art is not just a form, but an action – a verb that encapsulates the essence of being. Her art transcends mere expression; it's a meditative journey through life's tapestry, an exploration of love, a commitment to generosity, and a daily reaffirmation of hope and deliberate living. Her art practice is a sacred space, a sanctuary for introspection and powerful, challenging dialogues with the self.

Deeply interested in Art History, her artistic expression spans various mediums, including drawing, painting, printmaking, and collage. Her work explores unique trajectories that each individual carves through existence, the fascinating interplay of life's synchronicities, and the cumulative impact of choices made or paths left unexplored. These intricacies and the inevitability of the present moment are the core of her inspiration. To Marina, the canvas is a poignant metaphor for life itself. In her process she employs layers, mark-making, addition and reduction techniques and the materiality of medium to create richness and history on the canvas.

Fascinated with organic shapes and forms, Marina is always on a lookout for beauty in unexpected places. Gathering her inspiration from nature, she wants the viewer to take a moment and ponder “What am I seeing? What am I experiencing?” Marina doesn’t buy cut flowers because of the inevitability of their death. In this series she is looking for ways to prolong lives of objects found in nature and keep the memories vibrant and alive.

She is using a multi-step process to make impressions of flowers, leaves and other objects found in nature on wax or rice paper. She then scans these fragile original prints, processes them digitally and prints them out on watercolor paper, glass, acrylic and metal plates.

Marina is fascinated by the power and the process of art making.

She often starts a blank canvas without a plan as she allows materials, moods, music, her internal and external worlds lead the way into the painting. Her works often go through metamorphosis of colors, themes, and layers of paint, collage, sanding, scribbling, drawing, scratching and layering again. She allows the work to dictate what needs to be expressed in the moment.

She trusts in the process.