Marcia Festen American

Marcia is a Chicago-based artist. My work is concerned with change and
evolution. The imagery is drawn loosely from organic systems, though I
resist resolving it into anything fixed. I am less interested in the final
image than in the act of looking and questioning what I see and how I see
it. I spend extended time in a landscape-walking, observing, returning—
before translating that experience into abstract form.
The paintings are built through layers that shift, obscure, and re
emerge, resisting a fixed image. They hold a tension between recognition
and dissolution, drawing on organic structures, memory, and the slow
accumulation of looking. I am also drawn to creating beauty as a way of
holding on to what is good during times that often contradict this.