Marcie Soderman-Olson

 

Mentoring Philosophy:

The branching of trees, synaptic impulses firing, light beaming, the rhythm of water lapping on the shore, the constant beating of the human heart.  It all speaks of life.  Pattern, repetition, and change.  The microscopic and macroscopic echo each other remarkably in movement and form, in the gathering of force and the dissolution of form, and in the replication of these processes over and over again.

All life is an “Ebb & Flow.” The act of drawing, painting,–mark-making–is a process imitative of life.

I am a painter who works abstractly or in abstracted landscapes, in acrylic, oil and watercolor.  I work in very large and very small formats and enjoy the dialogue of opposites in my work.  Abstracted landscapes are visual metaphors for states of mind and emotion; the ‘light’ and water paintings are metaphors for healing & meditation.

I have been a mentor for 8 years (4 cycles) and find it the most rewarding form of teaching art (which I did for 20 years on a college level).  In fact, it goes way beyond teaching, to a deep exchange between mentor and protégée, one of the deepest ways of participating in a dedicated community of artists.  WARM artists are supportive of one another.  We work to raise all of our art work to a high level.

As a mentor I strive to encourage my protégée to recognize her strengths as an artist, to develop her own distinctive artistic voice by building on those strengths.  I strongly discourage anyone from working in my style.  Documented by how differently many of my protégées work from one another:  Silvana Lacreta Ravena, large oil and encaustic abstract paintings; to Raelee Edgar—who grew up in the automobile state, Michigan, who paints sexy, photorealistic oil paintings of vintage American cars; to Linda Ricklefs Baudry who creates abstracted pastel drawings of dramatic storms and ethereal landscapes that convey deep emotion.

4.  As part of WARM, I was fortunate to be selected by the WARM exhibition committee for a 2012 juried solo show at the Coloplast Corporation, Minneapolis and exhibited in the juried BMW exhibit,  Travelogue, with 3 other WARM artists: Francene Christiansen, Raelee Edgar and Alis Olsen.  In addition, I exhibited 24 works in the Hudson Hospital Healing Arts Program from April to August 2013, a solo show at Corazon in Minneapolis, March – April, 2013, as well as several other shows.

Artist Statement

Marcia Soderman, MFA, PhD, has been a professional painter and art instructor at metro colleges for over twenty years.  She is a Mentor working individually with students for Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota (WARM).  Her work has been published in journals such as International Contemporary Artists, and shown widely in juried exhibitions.

“I create abstractions based on the natural world as visual metaphors for inner states of mind as well as a concern about climate change.  My subjects have included water distillations (healing and meditation), and solar and fire distillations (determination, spirit, an inner fire).  I have always been fascinated with nature in all its intricacy, and often paint small watercolors outdoors on site as studies for my larger acrylic abstractions.”