I use my art to express both the joy and pain of childhood. Through my paintings I explore a range of human activity and relationships, including the spiritual connection between people and their animals. I want others to feel the unconditional love experienced in these relationships. Sometimes we can find love from animals where there is little to be found in some of our families.

In a very tumultuous world, art can help us feel grounded. My relationship with art began when I was very young. As an abused child, art was my way of escaping a childhood filled with fear and uncertainty. Abandoned by my father at age three and left with an unstable mother unfit to care for us, my four-year-old brother and I literally survived on mayonnaise sandwiches.

In grade school I enjoyed drawing “fashion” women which represented a safer world, beyond the poverty we knew. The positive attention I received encouraged me to pursue my art. I developed my drawing and painting skills through art school and an art illustration career. My early thirties brought marriage and more time to concentrate on my fine art.

I believe art can help heal emotional wounds and I feel a healing power in the process. Art has been so powerfully therapeutic for me that I want to use my art to help heal other children by donating a portion of my profits to charities for abused children.

Recently, I have begun to find ideas for my paintings in the early morning hours while emerging from the dream state. I feel this gives me a fresh source of emotionally charged compositions. To support the emotional aspect of my paintings, my style is impressionistic with bold brush strokes. I also tend to utilize pure colors on my palette, mixing colors only on the canvas.

Lange Marshall