Marlene Bauer
Portland painter, Marlene Bauer references familiar locations and places to create poetic and painterly abstractions. Her paintings transform the suggestion of place into delightful, meditative compositions utilizing a sophisticated color palette. These fresh interpretations of familiar urban scapes around Portland bring depth and character to an otherwise neglected subject matter. Bauer continues her interest in specific locales with familiar titles such as Hawthorne,Hoyt and Overlook Drive. Technically, she works the surface of her abstract compositions ordering, stacking, and arranging color and form. Her vocabulary of shapes describes her relationship to the places she depicts while creating visual rhythm and subtlety. The result is a distillation that is her own unique vision.
Born in Vancouver, Washington, Marlene Bauer has spent most of her life here in the Northwest. She is a graduate of the Pacific Northwest College of Art and teaches art at Marylhurst College and Clackamas Community College. She has been responsible for developing the program for the new Alexander Gallery at Clackamas. Marlene Bauer shows her work regularly in the Northwest and has been included in exhibits at the Oranges/Sardines Gallery in Los Angeles, the Portland Art Museum, the Maryhill Museum, Marylhurst College, the University of Oregon Museum of Art, Eugene and Southern Oregon State College, Ashland. She recently completed a commission for the Sea-Tac Int’l Airport, entitled, Minnich, a 16’ glass and stone mosaic column designed from her painting and fabricated in Italy.