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Marjorie Guyon
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Marjorie Guyon presents a highly conceptual series of lushly textured paintings that masterfuly interweaves the earthly and sacred realms. Her work begins with a multifaceted technique of combining natural materials ranging form self-ground pigments to the luminously textured marble dust that coats the surfaces of her paintings. She communicates messages about the timelessness of art and its universal purposed that transcend different peoples, cultures and eras. Although highly abstract compositions, each piece has a central form that can almost be deciphered. The forms which have been obscured like fossils buried under centuries of history allow for each viewer to freely create a personal narrative and interpretation of the piece. Guyon states, "My mother showed me what it means to be seen with eyes of love. She knew about blackberries and how some stains cannot be removed. She understood how new shoots will push through old leaves because they have to get to the light. She understood the sheer force of life and how it rises and falls inside of us. These ideas are the essence of my art. My work is a form of metaphorical landscape; however the landscape is interior and the terrain is the soul. The "soul" encompasses the oldest part of us that stretches back into that ancient and universal knowledge that we carry in the quietest part of our heart." Guyon began studying art at the Brooklyn Museum School of Fine Arts the she attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree. Her work is reviewed and collected nationally and Marjorie Guyon continues to live and create in Lexington, Kentucky. ARTIST STATEMENT I grew up in New York City, the daughter of a woman who loved art. I spent much of my childhood walking through the halls of the Museum of Modern Art staring at the Rousseau painting of the woman in the jungle, or sitting in the sculpture garden with the large steel-gray woman by Gaston LaChaise looking down on me. In high school I took figure drawing and painting at the Brooklyn Museum and studied art at Cornell University in the summers.I graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts with a degree in poetry interspersing that work with winter sessions at Rhode Island School of Design. Upon graduation from college, I began work as a writer, could not stand the tidiness of the process, and started to paint again.My background in poetry began to merge with my painting. In the beginning, I was strongly influenced by Romare Bearden.I loved that he was a story teller who mixed collage and painting.One of the first galleries to show my work was Merton Simpson, an African art dealer in New York who knew Mr. Bearden and could see his influence in my work.Romare Bearden let me understand the possibility of building a story into a painting.Over time, I moved through my emulation of Bearden and into a vision of my own. I have always worked in collage, which loosely means I put one thing over something else.I layer pigment and marble dust to build depth in to the painting.Several years ago, I began to move back down through these layers as though I were working an archeological site.Within these surfaces, I've discovered ancient walls, shadows of forgotten lives, the mark of the old ones who tell us their secrets. For some time, my paintings have always been about finding a way to the luminous garden - a world within a world, framed and protected..The way we protect the people we love the most and carry our memories in the deepest part of our hearts.I love the garden and the idea that we can create a frame around that which we love -a cameo of the archeology of the soul. Those familiar with my work will recognize these paintings - Tiempo, Helenow #12, Giallo, The Hidden Mambo - paintings of worlds within worlds.Illuminations of the sacred and precious.Two years ago, having been Roman, Etruscan, Pre-Columbian and African, I became Asian and launched into what I simply call, my Chinese life. Calligraphic and powerful - which has led me into a new body of work which for lack of a better term, I call the 'exploded image'.The exploded image paintings are the story minus the frame.The Noir series is the first form of these new paintings.The idea of the exploded image is exciting to me.It is my new playground. 
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