Marion Peck was born in 1963 in Manila, the Philippines, while her family was on a trip, and grew up in Seattle. In 1985 she graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, then studied Fine Arts at Syracuse University in New York and Temple University in Rome. In the 90s, she started exhibiting in galleries across the United States, then internationally. In France, it was Magda Danysz who first acknowledged her talent and began to show her work in Paris from 2005. Marion Peck now lives in Portland, USA.
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Narcissus, or the modern image myth
"In a society that looks at and measures itself through instantaneous and fleeting images, Marion Peck stands in reaction to all of this. Her paintings and drawings are very slow to execute, the oil painting requiring a long time; neither large to impress the visitor; neither obvious to understand at first glance.
The artist invites us to take a closer look at the swamps fueled for centuries by the myth of Narcissus. Nowadays these waters are no longer so beautiful, and the reflection offered is far from being as faithful as a mirror could produce. The only point in common with the story told by Ovid, is that our society as a whole plunges, gets lost, in these distorted images. Society drowns in these
waters without taking the time to appreciate anything other than its sublimated representations.
Through her paintings, which subjects come subconsciously to the artist s mind, Marion Peck is part of a surrealist tradition, filled with mythological references, building contemporary legends. Nothing speaks louder than these creatures with exaggerated body shapes, monstrous products of modern times. Marion Peck s practice also deals with the unconscious, buried dreams and nightmares that rise to the surface.
Like theatrical pictures, these works shine by their accuracy in observing the paradoxes surrounding us. In a world and a culture tending towards a standardization of emotions and representations, Marion Peck presses by subtle touches, where it hurts, exactly where the human flaws and weaknesses are placed. Surrealist in her painting style, Marion Peck's work is nonetheless emotionally realistic."
Magda Danysz
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Conversation
We have been collaborating since our first show together, with your husband Mark Ryden back then in 2005, and it is interesting to see how your art stays consistent and at the same time evolves. When you started painting what was your first inspiration and how would you describe the evolution of your style?
As a young artist in the 90s I was inspired by the painters of the early Italian Renaissance,like Giotto and Piero della Francesco, and also by painters of the Northern Rennaisance, like Memling and Breughel. For many years I slowly taught myself to paint by studying their works, and struggled with how to use what I learned from them to create modern paintings that felt fresh, honest, personal, sincere, and unencumbered by academic pretensions. When I first saw the work of Mark Ryden, who would later become my husband, it spoke to me with great power. It was stunningly beautiful to me. We had so much in common, so much of everything I had been working towards was there. His use of styliztions of modern popular culture, which I had never seen done before, felt like the missing piece of the puzzle I had been searching for. I think his influence showed strongly in my work at first, though it also felt like a smooth continuum of what I had been doing before. As the years go by I feel I am returning more to my roots, to my love of Giotto, etc. It is interesting to watch the path of my work unfold.
Over the years you have been painting and described as a pop surrealist? How would you in your own words describe your style?
Pop surrealism is pretty much just what it sounds like: surrealism blended with popular culture. I would say it describes my work somewhat, though frankly I can't stand much of the art that falls under the banner of this movement, often nothing more than shameless, mediocre rip offs of Mark's work. I guess I was not alone in feeling his influence! But there are also some excellent artists out there who perhaps identify themselves as pop surrealists. I do very much indentify as a surrealist. I have great respect for the first surrealists, for the Dadaists of the early 20th century, and my art idols are some of the women that came out of that movement: Lenora Carrington, Remedios Vara, Dorothy Tanning. I am fascinated by dreams, by mythology, and by thinkers like Carl Jung. With my art I try to penetrate to deeper layers of consciousness, to the places of dreams, childhood memories, to the kinds of places you can talk with animals.
Your latest series, depicts, bears, crows, dogs, cats, fishes. Is there symbolism related to the creatures you paint?
"Symbolism" isn't the word I would choose to describe the approach I take to making paintings. As soon as we think of something as a symbol? we put ourselves in an abstraction, we are looking at the map instead of looking around at the landscape we find ourselves in. The animals that found their way into my paintings came to me through dreams and visions. I just do my best to re-present them.
In each of your paintings there is an underlying story or meaning? How do you integrate this in your process, do you start a painting with the idea of this meaning first or rather start with an image first that then turns into a message?
Definitely more the second thing, though not exactly, because it never really turns into a "message". I start with an image, and I stay with an image. People often think that the ?meaning? of a thing has to be like a message, something we could write down in words. I think the ultimate meaning of anything is an image, not a word. Words are something that make us feel like we have a tidy box to put the image into. But the real meaning is the image, just as it is.
All your creatures, whether human of animal, have in common a special glance, eyes often wide open that express a lot. What do you want them to convey?
As they say, eyes are the windows of the soul. I would say that most of the time I am trying for the kind of neutral expression I find so wonderful in the art of the renaissance, where even a saint in the midst of martyrdom has a peaceful, faraway look in their eyes.
Tell us about the theme of your latest show that you prepared for Danysz gallery in Shanghai? What inspired you?
I recently discovered an American mid century surrealist artist named Gertrude Abercrombie, and in many ways this show was inspired by her work. She worked on a small scale, making simple but magical little paintings, and that is what I am trying to do here, in my own way. Problems with my shoulder have made it impossible for me to work on a large scale any longer, but I am finding that the limitations have a stimulating effect on my creativity, as limitations often can do.
In "Bear Dream", the construction of the painting reminds at the same time a theatrical stage and a diorama as they were done in the XIXth century. The theatrical reference is recurrent in your work. Is stage an inspiration for you?
As I was saying earlier, I have a special love for Giotto and other painters of the early Italian renaissance, their ways of depicting rooms and buildings. I love the pushed up use of perspective, the feeling of compression it gives the space, which makes it feels like theater. Theater is a way we re-present reality, and there is
something that attracts me to representing a representation. I am attracted to dioramas for the same reason, for their step back from ?reality?, the layer of representation that makes us feel a certain sense of ?un-reality?. The layers seem to distill things, somehow seem to bring out more of an essence.
You seem to like to paint night scenes, use lights that reminds us of dusk, or set your characters in cave? All this produces a special light to your paintings? How do you interpret the lighting you paint?
I love the darkness as well as the light. Darkness is mystery, the yin of the Tao, the feminine, the depths of the ocean, of the night sky, of the subconscious. To move beyond normal, everyday, ego driven solar conciousness is a move towards darkness. I find the most magical times are dawn and dusk, when light and dark are changing places. There we can sense a place between worlds. That?s the place I?m trying to paint.
You paint with oil, in a very classical manner. What do you like about this technique in particular?
I have always been drawn to it in an irresistible manner. It's kind of like I had no choice, like I was born wanting to paint this way, I don't know why. Very soon in life I discovered that I far preferred painting with oils over acrylic, a medium I cannot stand. (It's plastic! Yuck!) Whenever I speak with a representational painter who is using acrylic I try to talk them into trying oil instead. It has so much more richness and range! Because you use oil painting, time is of essence and your paintings take a long time. How do you manage this very specific time characteristic?
I often say that I don't really so much have a painting style as I do a kind of neurotic compulsion. In many ways I am a naive painter. I often feel like I don't know what I am doing, like I'm feeling my way blindly forward. But I have a compulsion to get whatever painting I'm working on absolutely right, and will doggedly pursue it through whatever it takes to get there.
Sometimes it feels like it comes down to the tiniest, most itty bitty pieces of paint, but they all have to be right. Sometimes I compare it to cooking, when you have to stir and stir until the moment when a sauce starts to thicken or the egg whites start to fluff. Then all of the sudden, the painting is done. Sometimes it takes an awful lot of stirring to get there.
A conversation between
Marion Peck and Magda Danysz,
march 2020
