Statement

As a child I was encouraged to explore music and books—never art. And yet I remember a strong desire to draw from a very young age. My path to painting followed years of musical training and then poetry, always circling around the longing to paint. Mountains and adventures in the woods were the part of my childhood that led me into painting.

For decades I have been exploring the natural world of my surroundings, especially the deep woods and mountainous places. In these places it is possible to experience forgotten foundations, endless stone walls mostly unattended and the remains of orchards and sheep pastures that once made orderly designs on the side of the mountain. The original forest growth met another fate long before human forestry began. It is a much earlier period of time that has become the subject of my recent work.

On a hike up a hill not far from my home in Vermont, I was stopped by a very large black shape up ahead, crisscrossed by fallen trees. Half-hidden by the forest, I had to come closer. It was then that I realized the huge dark shape was a boulder, a glacial erratic. It had been deposited there by the retreating ice sheet 10,000 years ago. This was the first of many visits to the “rock”, and it took months for me to envision the mile thick glacier dumping the boulder in this place from which it would not move.

This encounter, among many others, which I have experienced in the natural world, are frequently the beginning of a series of drawings and paintings. It is a path of deeper understanding that continues to enrich my life on many levels.

Marilyn Allen

jollyhillma@gmail.com