Mariona Barkus

Artist Statement

Searching for spirituality in soul-numbing times…

Focusing on the psyche-soothing side of my artistic practice, these paintings reflect formal, aesthetic, and spiritual concerns.

My painting process is a form of meditation, an opening up of myself to what is in the moment. The forms that appear as I apply paint guide me in a meditative collaboration with pigment, integrating the accidental and the controlled — staying in the moment, letting the painting unfold and reveal itself, spawning enigmatic forms as an invocation of the ineffable.

Intuitive layerings of paint become images that resemble natural phenomena. There are hidden meanings in this evocative ordering of color and form, inviting the viewer to enter into the image & be mindful of the details. Whether aerial landscapes, seascapes, outer-space-scapes, cave interiors or close-ups of microbes, these paintings go beyond associations with the known. The forms prompt a slowing down of mental chatter as the work makes itself felt, calling forth archetypal experiences, becoming expressions of the mysterious, and alluding to the collective unconscious. Each image is a potential gateway to the inner self.

From macrocosm to microcosm, these forms echo a search for spirituality in our soul numbing times.