Marlene Struss

Born in San Jose, CA / Works in Santa Barbara, CA

BIO

Marlene Struss received her BFA degree from UC Santa Barbara in 1973 and has lived in Santa Barbara, CA, ever since, creating bodies of work from representational to abstract in printmaking, collage, digital, and today acrylic paintings. She has exhibited widely in the US and as far as St. Petersburg, Russia, and Seoul, Korea. Presently Struss is represented by 10 West Gallery in Santa Barbara and ArtPicLA in Hollywood. Struss's work can be seen in many film and television productions.

For me, painting is exhilarating exploration of and collaboration with paint applied or removed in layers with unusual tools and forces creating textures and illusions that suggest space, movement, geography or organic forms. Each layer is an aesthetic response to the previous layers, and thus the work unfolds like a life unplanned but flourishing and succeeding eventually. My artwork pays homage to the mysteries and paradoxes of nature and serves as an antidote to the anxiety of the manmade world.