Marianne Trent is a resident of Chester, New Jersey. She describes herself as a self-taught artist with a natural and organic approach to art. She has previously worked as a fashion designer, which she claims has helped her develop a sense for elements that carry through to her current work. Themes such as spirituality, man-made structures, and the environment appear frequently throughout her artwork. The process of making these current mixed media works involve both adding and subtracting layers of paint, paper, and fabric from the canvas.
Based on her background with fashion design, she feels that this experience has formulated a sense for color, pattern, and proportion. She also has past experience as a sculptor, which is present in handcrafted wooden frames in the works exhibited in the show. Trent switched from sculpting to painting, allowing for a more intensive quality to her work. Her frames work as an extension of her pieces, bridge the viewers reality with the painting ethereal space. She explains that these works are meant for the viewer to get in touch with the “mystical world outside our own physical reality.”
