Not a Bone, mixed media painting on canvas painting by Marie Kazalia                                                  dimensions h. 30 x w.30 x d. 1.5 inches

Not a Bunny, is the title of this mixed media work on panel (plastic papers collage materials, acrylic & alkyd paint) 2009, by Marie Kazalia

My art is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and it came to be there is a round-about way, via the Book About Death exhibition at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in New York CIty.  The exhibition organizers there confirmed that MoMA collected all 480 artist cards from the show, mine included. MoMA plans to do a re-exhibition.

title: Titania (satellite of Uranus), mixed media (oil stick, alkyd, on acrylic) on canvas

dimensions: 30 x 30 x 1.5 inches         Price: $800. USD

My latest mixed media painting titled, Titania (satellite of Uranus), completed on August 28th 2009, is the first in a series in which I combine various  techniques I’ve been working with, including  the oil stick resist technique…on 39 x 39 inch canvas. Other painting in the series are on 30 x 30 inch canvases, 36 x 36 inch canvases, as I work toward the ultimate use of  four 48 x 48 inch special stretched canvases I have waiting. Each painting in this series will be named for one of the 15 satellite of Uranus:
Titania (satellite of Uranus)

mixed media painting on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, by Marie Kazalia

Umbriel (satellite of Uranus)
Ariel (satellite of Uranus)
Miranda (satellite of Uranus)
Oberon (satellite of Uranus)
Cordelia (satellite of Uranus)
Ophelia (satellite of Uranus)
Bianca (satellite of Uranus)
Cressida (satellite of Uranus)
Desdemona (satellite of Uranus)
Juliet (satellite of Uranus)
Portia (satellite of Uranus)
Rosalind (satellite of Uranus)
Belinda (satellite of Uranus)
Puck (satellite of Uranus)

In my newest abstract work I consistently create a complex ground in an accumulation of elements on canvas or panel–overloaded acrylic image transfers from found images, often lens based images I’ve collected over month and years. The images I choose to use in a painting, I select intuitively and may reproduce with my scanner or digital camera, print and apply to the canvas face down with a glue of transparent acrylic medium. When dry, I remove the paper surface revealing  the ink of the image–these I add to and build to a visual completion, over which I layer transparent and semi-opaque acrylic color, then oil and alkyd color paints that demolish the earlier underlying esthetic, by painting out, covering over partially and adding up to a simplification,  in a complex visual texture and depth.

Splash 3 through 7 all have the dimensions, 12 x 12 x 1.5 inches or in centimeters: 30.48 x 30.48 x 3.81  gallery wrap canvas, and are priced at $300.USD each.

The work titled *Splash (earth)* is a drawing in charcoal, graphite, soft pastel, and marker on 17 x 22″ / 44 x 56 cm Cartiera Magnani Velata paper

and is priced $200. USD.

About the Splash series:

My Splash series of paintings began with what I think of as an inverted ritual–in that the tannin-rainwater from the rain soaked bark of a leaning tree in my yard dripped into a vessel I had placed there for other purposes. After the rain stopped, I discovered the vessel contained the light *tea stain* and understood from my study of natural dyes how to make use of it. I collected the tannin water and returned to my studio to pour the liquid onto a paper support surface, over and over–as the water of each poured layer evaporated I collected and poured more, building layers. Then I began to paint the tannin *tea-stained* areas with watercolor paint, acrylic paint glazes, finally adding details with markers.

That was how I came to create the first of the Splash series of paintings. My father was quite ill and then passed away shortly after I painted this first Splash.

When I did return to the Splash painting two years later, it was as a quite different me–unable to recreate my approach. I worked from real tea stain make from store-bought tea bags, and as my forms for my Splash paintings expanded and developed I began to use other art materials, such and acrylic mediums and alkyds, and pour my mixes directly onto stretched canvases. I feel many of my color choices are informed by advertisements –American, Japanese, Chinese–influences from my travel and expatriate years in Asia.  Even the central splash form (in black) in *Splash 7* is reminiscent of layered and abstracted Chinese calligraphic characters I also continue to study and work from.

Questions? Please email Marie Kazalia at:   mariekazzaz@embarqmail.com Serious inquiries only.