'Pigments have their own ways of acting…and I became obsessed with learning their traits.' —Marley Freeman
The enchanting work of New York-based artist Marley Freeman combines the discipline of representational painting with vivid abstraction. Freeman maintains a deeply personal style, drawing from her own experiences to inform her artistic practice, imbuing each canvas with a diaristic impression. Punting Strollers was conceived whilst Freeman was walking through her local park in the East Village, prompting the artist to focus on themes of public space, community, and greenery in nature. Whilst the present lot appears fully abstracted, the subject has not been lost completely as the blue and green strokes delicately allude to the natural spaces of the park.
The magic of Freeman’s work lies within the suggestive consistencies of her paintings. The artist’s implicit love of texture is inherited from her father, an antique textile dealer who profoundly influenced her practice. Freeman explained that her ‘sense of colour and interest in image-making comes from textiles and their varying levels of transparency, which is often related to weaving structures’.i Punting Strollers is a vibrant example of Freeman’s technique, layering colour to create opacity-comparable to a woven tapestry.
'Looking at a painting changes my perception of time. Things really slow down in the studio as I’m building layers of colour and as I experience shifts in light across different days and times of day.' —Marley FreemanEnthused from a young age by the spontaneity of pigment, the artist learnt to create her own gesso and acrylic paint with attention to the ways that it wanted to mix and perform. By creating her materials, she commands more control over the texture and density, ‘mastering [her] own subjective colour’.ii
Punting Strollers was included in Marley Freeman’s solo exhibition, Park Closes at Midnight with Karma Gallery, New York in 2019. Since then, she has been celebrated with five further solo shows across the globe, from the USA to Mexico. Her work can be seen at Karma Gallery until 22nd July 2022 at her ongoing show, Take Care in New York.