Marianne Watchel

Bio

Years ago, I sometimes referred to myself as a landscape painter and my work would have easily been recognized as such. I still am influenced by the landscape and readily use the horizon line as a starting point. Spending two or three months in the bush of northern Saskatchewan and Alberta every year and viewing the land by helicopter has shaped my definition of "landscape." The viewing distance determines recognition of objects. Often my paintings rely on "the incident." By this I mean, when viewing the work the eye is directed through a series of stops or pauses and then drawn on as it moves within the picture. The hope is that this can be done while still experiencing the piece as a whole. I’ve always been interested in pictorial tension and testing how far can something be pushed in a painting before it loses any sense of order. The order I refer to is not the unfeeling placement or clever juxtaposition of elements in a painting to achieve easy resolution but instead I hope the order comes through a kind of reconciliation that I have to come to as I work. Imposed solutions are sacrificed to intuition forged over years of engagement and the necessity of that particular painting demanding that specific response. I paint in the hope making something that I and others can take pleasure in looking at and responding to.