MARCIA BIASIELLO
Marciana Biasiello is an Artist, currently living just outside of Chicago. She specializes in creating beautiful paintings that are imbued with shimmering pattern in a romantic, narrative space.
Tell us about your earliest memories of being an artist.
I have always felt what it is to be an artist. As a little girl in Chicago, I made pictures by squirting paint onto paper using a toy spinner machine on our front porch and sold them to anyone who stopped to watch on their way to “The Royal Blue,” the store at the end of the block. After my cousin showed me how to shellac the rocks we had painted with tiny animals and flowers so that they glimmered in the sun, I sold them door to door from a red wagon. And I told fortunes in the back yard using a toy lie detector set under a tent made of blankets clipped to a clothesline. My first real creation was a storybook about a man and woman who fell in love and got married. I drew the pictures in a spiral notebook above the words my father had written down as I told them to him for me before I knew how to write. I am very likely continuing that same love story in my paintings today. My work has been in exhibitions around the USA and is included in private collections, including in Albuquerque, Alexandria, Appleton, Berlin, Boise, Boston, Brooklyn, Burbank, Fort Worth, Chicago, Laveen, Ligonier, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Oakland, Omaha, Riverside, San Francisco, Sacramento, Toronto and Westfield.
Tell us about your earliest memories of being an artist.
I have always felt what it is to be an artist. As a little girl in Chicago, I made pictures by squirting paint onto paper using a toy spinner machine on our front porch and sold them to anyone who stopped to watch on their way to “The Royal Blue,” the store at the end of the block. After my cousin showed me how to shellac the rocks we had painted with tiny animals and flowers so that they glimmered in the sun, I sold them door to door from a red wagon. And I told fortunes in the back yard using a toy lie detector set under a tent made of blankets clipped to a clothesline. My first real creation was a storybook about a man and woman who fell in love and got married. I drew the pictures in a spiral notebook above the words my father had written down as I told them to him for me before I knew how to write. I am very likely continuing that same love story in my paintings today. My work has been in exhibitions around the USA and is included in private collections, including in Albuquerque, Alexandria, Appleton, Berlin, Boise, Boston, Brooklyn, Burbank, Fort Worth, Chicago, Laveen, Ligonier, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Oakland, Omaha, Riverside, San Francisco, Sacramento, Toronto and Westfield.
Tango
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Purple
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Marcia Biasiello
"My first real creation was a storybook about a man and woman who fell in love and got married. I drew the pictures in a spiral notebook above the words my father had written down as I told them to him for me before I knew how to write. I am very likely continuing that same love story in my paintings today."
Waiting
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Marcia @ Work
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Tell us about your work.
I have always been moved by story. We tell them out loud to each other, and silently to ourselves, sometimes without realizing it. Narratives connect the subtle, revealing and creating meaning. The branch, the chair, the adored, the longing, the projection, the connection. Words move us. And, images do as well, hopefully not just the instant and disposable.
My paintings are stories. I see these images as depicting pivotal moments. What happens before, after and even during the moment of the scene being depicted is open with possibility. I see the frame as drawing a line around an otherwise normal environment and an otherwise uneventful moment. By constraining the space and loading it with extremes, a next step seems inevitable. But a next step from choice, not restriction and constraint. Interactions between him and her, him and the past, her and the future, etc., all overlay the present moment to make any next move possible. I don't know what each figure in these paintings will do next. We are all fluid and unpredictable in each other's lives, and even in our own.
Tell us about some of your achievements.
I have an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and taught art at the University of Illinois in Champaign, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I have received grants for both visual work as well as a collaborative Opera, “The Martha,” with Robert Metrick. And, I am an award winning Minted artist with prints available on Minted.com.
How do you want your art to affect the viewer?
I try to present space in the paintings that offers a different logic than the rooms we walk around in and know what to expect. I want to offer a moment where someone can take pause and feel exhilarated. I hope when someone lives with a painting of mine, they may come home, drop their keys on the table and feel excited by it. And that they have dinner guests with swelling conversation and the painting I sat with many a night joins them on the wall, spirited and lively!
Offering
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Symmetry
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What makes your work and approach unique?
I see these pictures as visual narratives/talismans/love poems. Finding relationships amongst the elements is like writing a poem with phrases, rhythm, meter, and even dangling modifiers. My process seems to follow steps:
One: inspiration: fashion, music, gesture.
Two: composition.
Three: sketching onto the surface.
Four: selecting a limited color pallet.
Five: first layer of painting to define forms.
Six: dress-up of the figures.
Seven: look for relationships between elements, tension, release, constraints and interactions.
Eight: layer of intensity to create an overall continuity.
What is your creative session like?
I have a great love of beauty and want to present compelling environments. While some elements of beauty may be universal, symmetry, harmony, proportion, other elements draw me in me equally: attraction to the unknown, comfort of darkness, surrender to overwhelming. When I paint, I am in a room filled with music. My marks come out of a space between the inner and outer worlds. When painting, I long to become so engrossed as to lose all sense of time and space, and enter a portal between the canvas and whatever else is available. Music can often take me there. Nick Cave “Love letter, love letter go get her,” Joni Mitchell “I drew a map of Canada with your name on it twice..,” Van Morrison, “I'm nothing but a stranger in this world.” I start out drawing and then find myself responding to what is already on the canvas. The life force of the painting emerges when I am responding and no longer directing. After the materials have been prepped, colors chosen based on sensitivity to hue, saturation and tone, the body can respond to an emotional connection, applying paint and moving. It is the visual trail of a kind of dance. Seeing the image is then witnessing and in turn experiencing the artist's interaction with materials imbued with emotional responses to the subject matter and the physical.
Yellow Couple
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Lets Play
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"I have a great love of beauty and want to present compelling environments.
While some elements of beauty may be universal, symmetry, harmony, proportion, other elements draw me in me equally: attraction to the unknown, comfort of darkness, surrender to overwhelming."
Enmeshed
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Blue Rain
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Messiah
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Where would you like your art to be seen?
I am always excited to work with new galleries, curators, art directors and collectors.
Why is your work a good investment?
I am working consistently, exhibit actively and develop ongoing relationships with my collectors. The reach of my work is widening. I believe that living with images, music and literature, and telling each other stories makes life rich. I hope that living with my work brings enduring joy.
Website: www.marciabiasiello.com