Marlene Struss - Colors of Jazz

Artist Biography

My art career began in childhood in San Jose, California, where I patiently reproduced countless monochromatic Crayola variations of Sailboat on the Water, copied perfectly from my older sister Jackie's beautiful blue exemplar. I was mesmerized by the saturated color fading into light achieved by my controlled pressure on the side of the crayon. Of equal fascination was Paint by Numbers, the way so many different colors, applied one at a time all over the canvas, would magically make a harmonious picture. Another pleasurable pastime was the game of making a drawing out of a random pencil squiggle. After twenty years of education, I am fond of saying that I learned everything I need to know for making art in kindergarten, and as I cut and paste away, it is clear that today my work has come full circle smack up against my artistic roots. I have come back to the beauty of color and the innocence and intrigue of creation for its own sake.

Along the way I went to grammar school and became expert at bulletin board; in high school I was the layout editor of the yearbook; and at the University of California Santa Barbara I studied drawing, painting, and printmaking under internationally known artists Howard Warshaw, Irma Cavat, Larry Rivers, Bruce McCurdy, and Steven Cortright and attended weekly drawing workshops held by acclaimed artist Gerard Haggerty. Formal training instilled in me the practice of looking and the ability to accurately render a person or object, a tree or a scene with any number of materials, but the main message I absorbed was that it's good to be different.

My first collages, done in the heyday of "Question Authority," are fascinating surrealistic stage settings populated with villains and victims and dreamers. In them one can see the young baby boomer's angst over society, the environment, and the Catholic Church. In the background of Buddha Baby, an antiwar collage from the late '80s, are the World Trade Center Towers with smoke billowing out of the top of one. Viewers may now want to take another look for signs of prophecy in the early work Mother Nature Leaving the Republican Party.

In the '90s I rediscovered the joy of color and design and decided to separate art from activism, or even from trying to make any literal statement at all. It began with a scheme to make extra money by making and selling tiny geometric collage earrings at the weekly local beach show. They soon grew uncontrollably to resemble playing cards hanging from the ears, and sales were not exactly brisk. I decided to abandon the baby but keep the bath water, and photage was born: large abstract cut paper arrangements focused on color and form and influenced by music, nature, spirituality, and all sensual experience.

Though my art has changed over time, I still admire and feel a kinship with the artists and the work that I emulated in the beginning, the color of Maxfield Parrish and Bonnard, the light of Ansel Adams, the dreamy imagery of Chagall, the delicate balance of all oriental landscapes, the rich detail of traditional Indian art, and the all-around genius of David Hockney and Wayne Thiebaud, among others.

Please visit my Web site, www.startran.com/artweb, for a detailed resume of art shows, a retrospective art exhibit, and more.