Lost Star

Meredith Marsone’s Abstracted Portraits Explore Physical Connection

New Zealand based artist Meredith Marsone’s muted oil portraits reveal glimpses of her subjects in emotional and peaceful moments, “sparks” of realism amidst abstraction. They are typically painted with realistic details juxtaposed against areas of impasto, paint applied thickly enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. It’s a technique that she admits was borne out of frustration and is an artistically risky one, a process that she details at her Youtube channel and blog, where she recently wrote, “I think the best work I’ve made has been about things that are meaningful to me personally and have been about something I’ve had experience in.” Among her work’s primary themes are her explorations of identity, whether in her self-portraits or how we identify emotionally with others. In her recent “Oblivion” and “Intimates Series”, Marsone makes observations about how we connect to each other through our body language- her paintings capture an intimate glance, a blush, or the slightest touch of skin between the people in her portraits. “Connections are what life and therefore art is all about,” she says.

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“There’s so much more to life than finding someone who will want you, or being sad over someone who doesn’t. There’s a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself without hoping someone will fall in love with you along the way, and it doesn’t need to be painful or empty. You need to fill yourself up with love. Not anyone else. Become a whole being on your own. Go on adventures, fall asleep in the woods with friends, wander around the city at night, sit in a coffee shop on your own, write on bathroom stalls, leave notes in library books, dress up for yourself, give to others, smile a lot. Do all things with love, but don’t romanticize life like you can’t survive without it. Live for yourself and be happy on your own. It isn’t any less beautiful, I promise.” —Emery Allen 

I don’t think good-looking people realise how lucky they are. It’s all very well telling people to love themselves, but that’s not easy when society has skewed people’s perceptions to be so narrow and limited. If you don’t conform to society’s view of beauty, you’re invisible. It hurts, when that’s you. -Unknown

“And there it is, one day, you just wake up and realize that you can’t take anymore. You stop blaming and complaining and you start changing and rearranging.” —Sylvester McNutt III

“We are afraid to talk about what hurts because talking requires breath and there are certain memories we’d rather suffocate. Perhaps this is the reason we write,

because sometimes, words breathe better than we can.” —Maza Dohta

“Depression isn’t always at 3am, sometimes it hits you at 3pm when you’re with friends and you’re half way through a laugh and suddenly stop.” —Unknown