Marilyn Darrell

About

American, b. 1969 — Marilyn Darrell's work is guided by a self-inquiry into perception, movement, breath, and flow. During the making of an unwieldy large-scale abstract painting or tedious detail using miniature brushes on a small surface, there are striking overlaps in process and form - the embodied experience. Movements involve strategy, balance, when to push, when to surrender; all of which inform her engagement with paint on canvas. During a time of unprecedented challenges, seemingly little is within our control except the present moment — a space and time where we can affect immediate change, untethered to past or future outcomes. How we bring awareness to, and navigate these moments is the crux of our potential for change and holds implications for our future and understanding of our past. Her paintings offer a pensive rejection of a finished, durable work and through gesture, form, and color, focus on the immediacy of the moment. Using elements of disruption, futility, uncertainty, tension, deliberation, and indecision to connect the viewer with the physicality of painting and being-ness in the physical world. She was born in rural Louisiana, raised on the Nebraska prairie and the redwoods of Northern California, and called Austin, Texas home for many years. She is currently living in Portland, Oregon