Bio
Marion is an artist and archaeologist living in Texas
After graduating from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008, she earned a Masters degree (2012) and a Ph.D. (2020) from Texas A&M University in anthropology, focusing on Great Basin archaeology and ancient basketry and cordage. Her interest in botany, ecological adaptation, context, and time has played a key role her artwork. Her work is reminiscent of natural philosophical illustrations, referencing a European period of discovery in which artists were documentarians of scientific explorations, and scientists applied artistic sensibilities to misunderstood processes and systems. Much of Marion’s work utilizes technical tools of scientific illustration—pen and ink lines building a textural symbology—which she often combines with vibrant colors evocative of mythological beings or newly-discovered creatures in faraway places. Her work has been displayed in Maryland and Texas.
Artist Statement
My artwork explores subjects of adaptation: lifeforms evolved to thrive in a specific environmental niche and maladapted for any other environment. Context shapes the final form of organisms, and the final form reflects the context in which it developed. I use implements designed to create lines, like pen, pencil, and colored pencils as the foundation to my work. Feathers and their component parts are lines which in combination create the structure of a body. Three-dimensional elements of topography and lifeforms are reduced to simplified lines, but create patterns and shorthand for textures when multiplied or repeated. Contradictions are a key visual element to my work: simplicity of patterns complicated by a high level of detail, fanciful poses and colors contrasted by adherence to patterns and the confines of the page. Conceptually, dichotomies are reinforced themes, since subjects may appear simultaneously microscopic or on a geographical scale, or they may appear to be in flight but are frozen, and species are newly observed but they are unfixed in form. Time and context are unavoidable forces in my work as an archaeologist, and they are prime influencers on my artwork as well, as I depict between-spaces and snapshots of moments manifesting into other moments.