ARTIST
Figure Drawings
Figures painted with Pastels
OIL WATERCOLOR PASTEL
EMAIL: marlenesteele@fuse.net
The Approach to Figure Drawing. . .
In an effort to participate in the great tradition of figure drawing, Marlene Steele
explores the figure from life in charcoal.
Sometimes in revisiting a pose, Marlene Steele will reinvestigate a classic
figure on a toned paper or in another media such as watercolor or pastel.
These works seek to represent the human figure as an element of design in the
context of composition with the added challenge of color. By expanding on the
initial concept, the artist investigates in depth the viability of impressions of the
croqui sketch.
The defining process involves both editing and amplification and is achieved in
alignment with graphic design principles. The artist aspires to combine skills of
observation with personal terms of expression. There is much insight to be gained
in the process of seeing for oneself.
Figures painted in Oils
Yashica
Series in Black and White
on Grey Charcoal Paper
Quote on figurative painting: curator Daniel Brown July 19th 2013
"What always strikes me about Marlene Steele's art--be it in painting, watercolor, or drawing--it the exceptional dignity that
she gives to any of her subjects, be they figurative, or urbanscape, or occasional still life. Her kind of classical realism, most
manifest in her figurative work, imbues each model, each person, with an essential respect for both the life she renders and
for the art she makes from these figures. You will note how frequently she uses curves in her paintings and drawings of
figures, and they, too, provide an essential sense of hope, of optimism, of the neverendingness of her world of art.
She also favors a conservative palette, a gentle one, where colors neither scream nor overwhelm, but lovingly render her
subjects, her figures, in colors and hues that again link her with The Renaissance, in particular, and with the kind of painterly
realism that has nothing to do with copying, but everything to do with a transcendent originality, most manifest in her studies
of the male figure, which she approaches with grace and with the kind of dignity I associate with Ingres' paintings and
drawings of female nudes."