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About the Artist
Marvin Southcott is a Pacific Northwest painter whose love of landscape has taken the veteran artist around the world and back home to Bellingham, Washington. He commemorates his travels on canvas in both watercolor and chalk pastels. Marvin graduated from the University of Washington in 1958 with a degree in Industrial Design, and worked as an industrial designer until a life-threatening episode served to shake up his internal landscape. Electing to pursue his life long goal of teaching, Marvin quit his design job, moved his family and began lecturing at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where he also received his Master of Fine Arts degree. In 1969, Marvin established the Industrial Design program at Bellingham’s Western Washington University. He taught at Western until retiring as Professor Emeritus in 1991. Since retirement, Marvin, who is also the published author of two books, has pursued his artistic passion fulltime. He sees narration as the driving force in his paintings, and considers each piece an exploration of the relationship between subject matter, perspective and color. “It’s an illustrative expression you have to work at. It’s the same thing as writing a story, but you have to express these things with some juxtaposition of elements,” says Southcott. Marvin relies on the rough texture of Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper, from France, to give him the tooth he needs for both his wet-and dry-stroke watercolor techniques. Each painting begins “En Plein Air” to allow him to capture the light, tone and atmosphere of his subject. He then completes the detail and finish work in his Bellingham studio. Marvin recently incorporated chalk pastel into his artist's pallet. “Pastel is pure pigment, not modified or mixed with anything else,” says Southcott. “With pastels you have to juxtapose individual pigments so that your eye does the work of blending the colors for you. Your brain mixes the colors rather than the artist mixing the colors in a solution.” Watercolor or chalk pastel, a Marvin Southcott piece is always a study in the sensual conversation that emerges when light meets subject, and color intercedes. |
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To purchase art or for commission inquires: All images, © 2006 Marvin A. Southcott, Marvin Designs |