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Marianne Chapel :: Perceptions and Memories April 14- May 5, 2012
My work documents our journey to self-knowledge and moral development in the context of cultural references. I am interested in worldwide behaviors and trends that mirror the private and personal needs of social progress. It feels like a natural progression to relate individual experiences to large scale, international conversations. The same issues reveal themselves –financial security, interdependence or dependence, victimization, authority and control. Specifically, my work explores the way these issues present themselves through familial story telling or indoctrination. The story is told from one perception and is heard from yet another. Some place in between our identities our formed. The question I ask is, “What is your story and how or why do you need to tell it?”
My process is one of research. While my work always includes and revolves around the traditional methods of painting and drawing, I like to explore more conceptual forms of communication. I am often compelled to use a mixed media process that can involve drawing, collage and installation. Incorporating common or primitive materials, such as hay, jute, tea, and coffee, represent a connection and understanding of our past. Transparent materials such as wax and tracing paper, and acetate symbolize the complicated layers through which we view our lives.
The addition of text exposing words from a personal conversation, or in a diary type format, reveal an intimate and authentic identification with the viewer. In some of my work, word and image are linked. In other pieces words take over completely. In the piece, “Dirty Laundry,” the viewer is witness to personal journals - lines of text on tea dyed paper hanging by straight pins from jute. In this piece, it is important to me to ensure that a comprehensible message is actually communicated. I believe language can be intricately tied up with issues of possession and power. Language in my work makes it more firmly connected to popular culture.
I derive inspiration from representational painters: Lucien Freud, Paula Rego, Eric Fischl, Julie Heffernan, and William Beckman. I am intrigued with mixed media, installation and performance artists such as Arturo Herrera, Leonardo Drew, Barbara Kruger, Magdalena Jetelova and Jenny Holzer. I also am interested in photographers Rineke Dijkstra, Shirin Neshat and Gillian Wearing. Each continues to influence my passion for artistic methodologies and contextual development.
Marianne was born in Binghamton, New York. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from Indiana University in 1999. Marianne has traveled extensively to Europe, both to study and teach art. She has taught art in Bloomington, Indiana, Florence Italy, Buffalo, NY, and Batesville, Arkansas. She served as an Instructor of Art at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL for ten years resigning in 2010 to move to Panama, Central America. She also taught for several years at the University of Tampa and for the Sarasota County School systems.
Marianne has been the recipient of the Indiana Universities Graduate Studies Research Grant for Florence, Italy. She has received the Charles Lanham Fellowship for Travel Abroad. She has been awarded a research grant residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Marianne has received a faculty grant from the Ringling College of Art and Design for the creation and exhibition of a series of life-size figurative works. She has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States.
When not working in her studio surrounded by the Panamanian jungle, Marianne enjoys hiking, studying language and history, and teaching. She spends her summers in her house and art studio in the Laurentian Mountains in Val David, Quebec.
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