Karina Nishi Marcus
I work spontaneously to grow paintings as Nature creates, looking through the visible world to the undercurrents of inner forces.
I have no preconceived concepts when I approach the canvas. My passion for color is my guide, by love of pigment. I work in oil on canvas and various textures and surfaces. Each brush stroke combines challenge and conciliation, a conversation outside of words, an exchange before language. The canvas is an environment, a door to enter, the wild frontier of space, another world to explore.
Through voyages to many countries, I am influenced by myriad cultures and traditions, myths, histories of aesthetics and commonplace mysteries. But I am continually nourished by my primal sources: the natal waters of my ocean Pacific and the forests of the Coastal redwoods.
If the painting process leads me to an abstract, garden or landscape, I will follow. Though I bring all formal considerations of space, light, structure, and atmosphere to the abstracts, there is liberation in the release of image. My shapes become submerged in space, interacting with color and, floating as spectral forms in refracted twilight, open into a world of dreams and illuminations.
Painting and Nature,
a confluence of retrospection,
a meeting of holy waters.
For Hindus, where ever
a stream encounters river,
as tributary joins torrent,
there is a sacred place.
Painting is the embrace of Nature,
Painting is the gate of heaven.
Radiance Series
The “Radiance Series” arose at a time of seeking more light in my life and in my work.
Memories emerged of being a child watching gold dust float in the sunlight and the swirl of copper flakes and colors as I would close my eyes to dream. These works are inner windows into the cosmos, creation and chaos; harmonic tone poems to the music of the spheres.
Lost in the Forbidden City Series
These collage paintings evoke the convoluted labyrinth of the Forbidden City in Beijing, China; a 9,000 room maze of imperial palaces, vast courtyards, private chambers and secluded gardens that I
experienced spring of 1998.
I am lost in the Forbidden City
chasing the tail of a gold-foil
dragon at sunset,
melting into bronze,
terra-cota, jade and yellow silk,
Following the echoes
of muted bells
soaring over centuries,
and the smoke
of ancient incense.
1691 Burnside Road
Sebastopol, CA 95472
707-829-2572
[email protected]
showing at ARTrails of Sonoma County
Oct. 13-14, 20-21 2001
10 AM - 5 PM
1430 King St., Santa Rosa
content copyright 1997, 2001 Karina Nishi Marcus
