Guest Designer: Mary Marley

Hi, everyone! Mary Marley here. I'm excited to be a guest blogger for StencilGirl Products, and it's a pleasure to share my work with you! My mother introduced me when I was young to the use of stencils in her work as a decorative painter.

She was interested in the preservation of early 18^th and 19^th century American patterns. This broad exposure to many different patterns and the process of cutting stencils was the launching point of visual art for me. I am trained in fine arts and have been teaching visual art for many years as well. My career as an artist began with a focus in figurative oil painting. Through the years I have extended my skills to paper cutting and collage then moving into mixed media abstraction. For the last five years I have found myself working exclusively in encaustic paint.

I'm attracted to encaustic because of the endless possibilities this ancient medium offers. From traditional painting techniques to collage, photo transfer, texture, sculptural qualities, the versatility of encaustic paint holds a great experimental quality to me.

The use of encaustic allows for layering color on color to achieve a luminous surface. My use of color is inspired and drawn from the organic world. Working abstractly I incorporate patterns and frameworks in an nontraditional way, creating themes of contrast using balance against complexity and harmony set against chaos.

StencilGirl Products are durable and precise. The skill and talent of the artists who design the stencils provide a marvelous launching point for creating imaginative compositions in a variety of media. It's a great resource to be able to reference an extensive variety of form and style that is unmatched by any other source. The stencils hold up through heat, paint, wax, pigment and any other abuse I have heaped upon them. Thanks for letting me share with you today, and I wish you the best on your creative journey!

Mary Marley

Website

Facebook

Instagram