ARTIST STATEMENT

My approach to painting is intuitive; an expressive reflection of my inner self. Working in mixed media, my work combines painterly abstraction with figurative elements and found images, transcending the confines of artistic language to create my own personal vision. One of the recurring themes in my work is the idea of recycling or giving old, discarded or unusable items a new life, rescuing them from the landfills. These paintings combine the ancient medium of paint with the technologically new, yet nearly obsolete, 3½” floppy disk, remnants of this age of obsolescence and fitting forms for a new approach to artistic reclamation in the Postmodern world.  Creating images that are both abstract and naturalistically relevant, my work transcends the boundaries of artistic rhetoric to discover new forms freely and directly. Picturing them through personal sensibilities, the subtleties of nature vie with the recognizably human and conceptually abstract as I convey my aesthetic response to time and place. At the same time, I allow viewers to participate in the world of my own experiences and enjoy the paintings on their own terms. One is free to react to them as demonstrations of the tactile elements of pigment, painting’s most basic properties, or as messages triggered by personal response. My recent body of  work is about alienation and disconnect. We are surrounded by people but we are all alone. Although technology has vastly improved our lives and brought us closer in some ways, it has also eroded and corrupted our sense of community and interpersonal connections. Our relationship with nature grounds us and puts our lives into perspective. By combining natural elements; trees, animals, with images of human corruption and pain overlaid upon beautiful words of inspiration, I seek to find  unity and wholeness.

BIO

Raised in New York City, Mary Larsen was exposed to art before she could hardly doodle. The taming of her brushstroke began with classical training in painting and drawing at the infamous High School of Music and Art. Leaving the big bad city behind she went to New England where she studied printmaking and film making at Hampshire College. The call of the wild west brought her to San Francisco where she began painting in earnest and unlearned her previous training. She had several one-person shows before returning to her roots in New York City where she continued painting and exhibiting. Using New York as a base, she traveled throughout Europe and Asia with her paints, sketchbooks, and very little money. The years spent in Italy and India had a profound impact on her persona and her work. Later she followed her heart to San Juan, PR where she learned how to drive and curse in Spanish. After a few shows and a half she once again fell prey to the moving bug and ended up in Miami where she currently lives. Mary has exhibited in New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, San Juan, and Miami. Her work is in corporate and individual collections in New York, Miami, and San Juan.