About the Artist

Marie Cameron is an imaginative realist painter and mixed media assemblage artist exploring themes of hope and awe in the face of loss in the anthropocene. She is based in Los Gatos, California.

Born in New York City, Marie Cameron grew up in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes and earned a BFA with distinction from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, majoring in painting and minoring in sculpture. While continuing to paint and exhibit, she worked in giftware design for Seagull Pewter and children’s book illustration for Barefoot Books, Buddhist Tales (1997, 2014) and Clever Katya (1998) and was awarded a prestigious Canada Council Explorations Grant in painting.

Her award winning work has been shown and collected internationally and has appeared on the cover of the novel, The Memento (2016), Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine (2017) and featured in the art magazine Poets and Artists (issue 85 – 2017) as well as Stanford University’s Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere’s website (2020) and Content Magazine’s website (2021). Her work has recently been published in Jen Tough Gallery’s Artists of the Bay Area, Wild Lands and Fun Size (2022) and in Photo Trouvée Magazine’s Echoes of Yesterday (2022).

Since moving to California, she has exhibited at Museo Diocesano, Pacific Art League, Triton Museum of Art, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Gallery 24, SOMArts, Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art, Anne & Mark’s Art Party, Santa Clara University Art and Art History, Las Laguna Gallery, Sanchez Art Center, Vargas Gallery, New Museum Los Gatos, Iwasawa Oriental Art, Whitney Modern, Arc Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, curated., de Young Museum of Art, and virtually with the Artist Alliance, Photo Trouvée Magazine, I Like Your Work Podcast, Cabrillo Gallery and O’Hanlon Center for the Arts. She is currently represented by curated. and Jen Tough Gallery.

Artist Statement

In 2020 I began embroidering silk rainbows onto vintage photographs in an attempt to reconnect with a sense of hope in the face of so much tragedy. The pandemic was raging, there were continual political, social, and environmental crisis and fires were burning all over California to the point that it was unhealthy to even breathe the air. I decided I needed more rainbows in my life.

Why rainbows? For me, they symbolized not only inclusivity, but represent an ephemeral, almost magical connection to our sense of wonder and possibility. I desperately needed to see the rainbow in myself, in others and in our world. I chose discarded, dog-eared photographs, caught from the light and shadow of the past, that spoke to the transience of the moment and the long arc of history. I loved the juxtaposition of the black and white photographs with the subtle sheen of the hand dyed thread which seemed to emphasize the magic of the rainbow. It became my daily, meditative practice to sit next to my air purifier and tenderly pierce fragile photographs with the finest of needles, pulling through luminous silk, stitch by careful stitch, needlework that conjured up my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Each rainbow in gratitude for the past and a prayer for the future.

I would share these works online spreading the joy and collaborated with my friend and author Christy Ann Conlin whose lovely verses graced the postcards few printed from several of the #morerainbows! series, mailing them to anyone in the world who needed a rainbow!

About the Artist

Fernanda Martínez is a mexican artist based in Oakland, California. She graduated in communications and moved to California where she created La Tinta Art, her personal brand. Fernanda’s art and murals are best recognized for its highly expressive spirit; through her work she explores the relation with the environment by incorporating nature elements as themes, her primarily medium is acrylic. Through her one of a kind vibrant pieces, Fernanda aims to inspire people to celebrate life and pay attention to details.

Over the past years, Fernanda has exhibited her work throughout galleries and local events; she has also collaborated with brands licensing designs for seasonal retail and textile collections. La Tinta’s products can be found in local bay area stores and select online platforms.

About Artist’s Work:

In my creative practice I tend to construct stories where colors are more than simple elements. I like to think about each color as a unique entity that comes to life as the process evolve. In the end, color determines the wholeness of each and every one of my pieces.

I describe my process as experimental and intuitive, where reflection is present in every aspect of it. When there is no plan, there are endless possibilities that contribute to my artistic practice growth.

Painting is reflecting and finding the truest connection to oneself, then, feelings and thoughts arise, building a unique story behind each artwork. My paintings are short stories, holding many hours of self-conversations and joy.

Each one of my pieces is a unique statement that represents feelings of connection, expansion and growth; same as we perceive the power of earth by its foundations, grounding, seasons and colors.

Artist Bio

Mary Jo Matsumoto works across a variety of mediums including oil paint, ceramics, and bronze. The repeating motifs of women, ocean life, and mythology that she developed during her 14-year career as an accessory designer now intertwine and unfold in her paintings and sculptures. Her realistic portraits seek to convey the inner world, particularly the untold stories of women. The unseen world is something she attempts to address in all of her work, regardless of subject matter. Recently she’s been painting on round canvases because of the healing reference to the eternal cycle of life as we emerge from the effects of this past year.

Mary Jo lives in Laguna Niguel, California. When not making art, she interviews inspiring painters, sculptors, and curators at her site, FoxandBunny.net. She was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, and grew up in California. Graduating from U.C. Berkeley, she received an MFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She ran her own company as a handbag and fine jewelry designer before pursuing a career in the visual arts. Mary Jo began studying drawing, painting, and sculpture at the Art Students League of New York in 2015. She studied at Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy, and returned to study sculpture and painting in NYC from 2018-2020. Her bronze Sphinx won Best in Show in the 2019 Art Students League Bronze show and her white bronze sculpture, Dove, won an Honorable Mention in 2015. Her work has been featured in Georgette Magazine, LINEA: Art Journal, and Classiq.me.

Artist Statement

My work this year has been about exploring the idea of untold stories and the inner world, particularly of women. I’ve been making paintings and drawings of people, water, and animals since I was a child, with internal stories to go along with the fairytales I read. I went on to study Greek mythology in college. To me these stories feel very close to the dream state; they are nonlinear, poetic, violent, filled with strange creatures, and bigger than life. In many ways, re-reading the Odyssey just before the pandemic happened influenced my paintings. The fall from grace, unwise decisions, and struggle for redemption dramatically played out in the news while I painted. I think that examining the human condition can reflect our secret fears and desires. I find that despite training classically, I’m still pulled to experiment with different mediums and ways of applying paint. I’m equally inspired by abstract as well as figurative artists and look to art history constantly as a treasure trove that fuels my imagination.

What does “Gaze” mean to you & how do you connect it to your work?

The concept of “Gaze” is very personal to me. I wrote my honors thesis at U.C. Berkeley about women in art and how the male gaze has shaped art history and the role of women in art as well as affected the work of women artists. We are now living in a golden age of female artists where one-woman shows that would’ve been ridiculed a decade ago are happening at major museums and galleries around the world. It’s a time in portraiture where women can look the viewer straight in the eye with an unflinching stare, whereas in the past only the very wealthy or those of the lowest level of society were allowed to do so in art. I also believe that the inward gaze is often the most emotional and often the hardest to convey. My work this past year has dealt with both kinds of gazes, outward and inward, in an attempt to capture the unseen internal world present in both. “Woman in a Beer Can Hat” is a graphite portrait of a dear friend. I wanted to show both her fearless nature with an unflinching dead-on gaze but at the same time glimpse a more vulnerable elusive quality that is hard to put into words. “The Pandemic” is a painting of a nurse in overwhelm during the worst moments early on in the pandemic. Although her gaze does not meet the viewer’s eyes, I wanted to convey her inward state of mind. “In the Forest” is a portrait of a friend who moved to the forest during the pandemic. These pieces, while very different, speak about the power of “Gaze”.