About The Artist
Marsha Connell is a Northern California artist known for her colorist paintings in oil, watercolor, and pastel. Her work has been exhibited widely in solo and group shows.

An Adjunct Professor in Santa Rosa Junior College’s Art Department, she has also presented workshops and lectures in many California venues, as well as in Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon, New York, and Mexico.

Artist Statement

My paintings are about the spirit of place. My subjects are inspired by my travels and by close to home sites in Northern California, where I have lived for over thirty years. Painting on location, en plein air, in oil, watercolor, or pastel, I observe the place: mood, shapes, color, and spatial relationships. I reflect on how the sense of place affects my own interior landscape.

The energetic pleasure of moving brush and paint keeps me from getting distracted by small details. I am attentive to nuances of color and value, but do not require fidelity to local color; expressive color often feels more true. Watching, listening, trusting intuition and gesture-infuse my painterly representation with an abstract sensibility.

I enrich the freshness of the initial exploration with the luminosity that builds from glazing and scumbling layers of color. This can evoke a new place of some mystery to me, a place of the heart.