Cool Colour Palettes: The Art Potfolio of Marion Krahn
Marion Krahn was born in Vancouver, BC, and is now based in Kelowna. In her practice, the artist takes inspiration from her local environment, capturing a hint of the Pacific Northwest landscape in large-scale paintings that are abstracted in composition and use subdued, cool colour palettes.
Mill Creek New Moon, acrylic on canvas
Water, or the suggestion of water, seems to be a common motif in Marion’s artworks. Painted in acrylic and mixed media, the works put forth hazy, dreamlike landscapes that dissolve into textural layers of paint if one examines the canvas up-close. In Marion’s recent Mill Creek series, I get the sense that the artist may begin a painting with a sketched suggestion of a landscape, proceeding to apply numerous translucent, textural layers that form a kind of fog or glaze through which the final image is viewed.
This technique lends itself nicely to evoking a sense of thick fog or dusky lighting conditions. Though there’s a clear connection to real landscapes and locations, the viewer of these works is encouraged to imagine them as more fantastical settings, or perhaps dreamed recollections of real places.
