Marilyn Austin:
Christchurch
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Marilyn is an award-winning artist with a passion for rich colours, texture and works with strong
visual impact. She is known for her abstract Cityscapes, landscapes and textural forms. The works are visually exciting and contain areas of heavy impasto with some smooth surfaces to create a three dimensional effect. Vibrant tones are woven within the work to produce a scintillating glow and mixed media is sometimes used to give added surface interest. However the texture is mainly produced by a unique layering method with many applications of pure paint so that the underlying colours shine through. Acrylic paints are used mainly because of the drying time required. This
method gives Marilyn’s works the recognisable quality which has become her signature.
Following a lifelong love of art which included High School and Art School studies, Marilyn now paints fulltime from her Christchurch studio. During the 1990s Marilyn completed a three year course in Art Theory, Practise and History and this has played an important role in her art
development.
The inspiration for her subjects comes from memories and impressions of places visited which are forever captured in the memory. The beautiful landforms of Aotearoa-New Zealand are often used as a motif, and a large part of her work is inspired by the rugged landscape of New Zealand, but
given a mystical and ethereal interpretation.
With the more abstract pieces where the subject is less defined, Marilyn attempts to capture the essence or the mood so that the viewer has an emotional response to the work. Texture is very important in these works and their tactile nature draws the viewer closer to reach out and explore the three dimensional effect. “For me, painting is about capturing that moment of beauty and emotion on canvas, which translates to a work which everyone can enjoy ‘. Marilyn’s work is exhibited widely and can be seen in collections throughout the country and overseas in the United Kingdom, United States and Europe.
‘I BELIEVE A WORK MUST SPEAK FROM THE HEART AND UPLIFT THE VIEWER, MAKING THEM WANT
TO RETURN TO LOOK AGAIN- TO SEE SOMETHING NEW AND INVITING. IF I CAN ACHIEVE THIS THEN I
FEEL I HAVE SUCCEDED ‘