My focus and fascination is the abstraction of the figure – a continuous theme throughout my career as an artist.
The figure and its emotional impact always resonated for me as a courtroom artist and found its way into my work as a fine artist.
But in my painting and mixed media works, I am freed from any boundaries and am more open to intuition, dream images and improvisation.
In this process of discovery, a narrative eventually emerges, however illusive it appears. It is often cloaked in mystery, eroticism and ambiguity.

Marilyn Church , May 2015

“The pieces of Marilyn Church offer entertaining juxtapositions and surprising similarities in the manner that she begins with line as the element that delineates both form and shadow. It is the use of color that then conjures the works emotional impact. There are eddies of wild colorations through which the image becomes highly emotive and effecting. This is even more apparent in Ms Church’s the “Black Slip” and also in “Moving Out” (both acrylic): both of these works have at their core foundation assertive linear elements which serve to defined areas of color without dominating them.”

— Eric Ernst, Southampton Press December 2007

“Shadowy figures are seated, standing or contorted in acrylic, water color, collage or other mixed media. The colors are sometimes bright and alternatively moody and often blocky, not quite fauvist but not naturalistic either.”

— Jennifer Landes, Easthampton Star October 28, 2010

marilynchurchart@aol.com

ARTIST STATEMENT