Loren Marks could be a modern-day oracle. At Delphi, the high priestess Pythia burned laurel leaves and barley meal, inhaling their vapours to enter a trance so she could utter the words of Apollo.
Amidst the fumes of oil paint, Marks takes up Pythia's mantle in a studio nestled into the industrial backlot of Te Atatu Peninsula. Marks makes paintings in continual flux, alive with the hum of her expressive application and electric colour, offering visions of form.
After graduating from Whitecliffe with a Bachelor of Fine Arts nearly ten years ago, Marks' practice fell to the wayside while she forged a career in fashion as a print designer. On a trip through Greece and Italy, Marks recalls being enchanted by frescos and archaeological sites like Ercolano and Delos. Inspiration kindled during her travels caught alight during the lockdowns of 2020 when painting offered an escape from the constraints of everyday life. It has remained with Marks as a meditative practice ever since.
Marks enters a subconscious middle world to begin painting. In this liminal state, she is excited by the loss of control and allows the paint to manifest her ideas, emerging and receding in the painted space. Although she hesitates to describe her process as deliberately spiritual, Marks acknowledges this resonance.
Atop a watery acrylic base, she builds swathes of oil paint. Marks uses brushes soaked in turpentine to erode the colour, as an archaeologist sweeps dirt from ancient pottery. In the lower third of Closed Eyes, she excavates colour and texture with dry brushing, revealing its sedimentary architecture and drawing the warp and weft of the canvas to its surface.
Figures coagulate as fragments of sculpture or restless spirits, momentarily visible through a fracture in a veil. An ethereal hand reaches up from moss-green depths inEyes for You, while the features of a face become apparent in the absent space Marks carves from her paint. Under the power of Marks’ spell, paint is alchemical, oscillating between liquid and solid, transparent and opaque, invoking figure and form.
As a child, Marks recalls playing with her coloured felt tips as if they were dolls, each speaking to her in a unique voice. In Things I Wish I Knew, magenta and plum still tussle for authority over the caustic hum of lilac. In Ever Before, acidic yellows spill forth like ectoplasm from three figures that survey the viewer. Marks can still hear her colour's chatter, though their conversations are more nuanced now.
Marks notes contrasting intentions when comparing her job as a designer and her practice as an artist. Her designs are always about the outcome and intended for someone else's purposes. Her paintings are primarily for her, and the process of creation is as crucial as their outcome; which often contrasts with Marks' initial expectations of a painting.
As Circe, the witch of Aiaia, remarks in Madeline Miller's reimagining of the myth, painting "was a little like spell-work…for your hands must be busy, and your mind sharp and free." Marks' intentions are manifest in her explorative, expressive practice. Still, she is attentive to her materials' voices, allowing her to conjure shades or memories and conduct them in a symphony of gesture and form.
By Maya Love. Feb, 2023
Facebook
Instagram
WeChat