Marlene Bauer
Marlene Bauer’s paintings combine precisely arranged color with elusive sketches from the artist’s observations, creating an enigmatic language of unique experience and inhabited space. More akin to poetic expression than visual representation, Bauer’s synesthetic works are both intensely personal and evocatively accessible—an alternative language that is instinctive but unspoken. Revealing the complex relationship between individual experience and artistic creation, Bauer’s paintings recall the desire for an intuitive and unconstrained interaction with one’s surroundings. Meaningful but freely defined, image fragments coalesce into a cohesive entity, as individual words create the space and substance of a poem.
A Northwest native, Marlene Bauer received her BFA in 1976 from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Since that time she has exhibited her work throughout the Northwest while teaching art as an associate professor at Marylhurst University. Her work is in private and public collections along the West coast including the Portland Art Museum, Oregon Health & Science University, Safeco Corp., and Seattle Arts Commission.Public commissions include a columnar mosaic for the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, WA, and most recently, projects for public libraries in Portland and Troutdale, OR.