Phoenix Artist Guild Meetings

Whether you’re viewing Bruce Marion’s compelling abstracted landscapes, cityscapes, figurative or contemporary wildlife, it’s likely his rich colorations and dramatic use of light first catch your eye. His works have a distinctive, glowing quality, as if they’re illuminated from within. He achieves this effect by applying multiple layers of paint, using palette knives, brushes, and some unconventional tools (think drywall scrapers and squirt bottles), creating complex surfaces with tremendous depth.

His goal is an expression of feelings and sensations that the viewer can readily share. As Marion explains:

“Artwork touches us on a personal, primitive level- this is why people are so passionate about art. When a piece resonates with you, you feel it in your soul, and it changes you with every viewing. Many people think of art as something to look at, but it’s so much more than that. It’s really a very interactive, and experiential, medium.”

With his wildlife series, the experience goes even deeper:

“Yes, their playful surfaces evoke a very modern feel, but I also try to capture that sense of history with each animal; these are magnificent beasts, with a strength and presence, with a lineage, that is stretches so far beyond us - it’s both admirable and humbling.”

Classically trained, Marion received his BFA in 1978 from the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where he studied with world-renowned artist Pat Nagel, and Lorser Feitelson, the father of Post-Surrealism. He taught at the Otis Parsons Institute of Art in Los Angeles, before moving to Arizona in 2000. His passion to keep art alive in the next generation has led to several grants to implement month-long art programs for Arizona elementary schools. He teaches his two-day workshops, “Breakthrough!” and “Quantum Leap,” to aspiring artists across the United States, and has recently taken his teachings overseas. In 2015, he and his wife Lee led a two week art workshop tour of Greece, followed by another workshop tour of Italy in 2016. He was awarded a major public commission for Sam Houston State University; the ten large works now reside in the new Social Sciences and Humanities building at the Texas college. His streaming weekly online painting lessons are available through his Bruce On Art program at www.BruceOnArt.com.