From the Artist

This print was part of a series of narrative autobiographical paintings and drawings documenting my life but also exploring and examining it.
—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records

The overriding themes of my studio work have been narrative and landscape. The narratives are not linear, but instead are notional, the stuff of invention and illogic. The subjects have varied from the biographical to the mythical, usually requiring figures although, more recently, not. Sketchbooks are where my studio life begins; they are a repository for fleeting words, phrases, images, quotations, and places to explore ‘what ifs’… A large part of the joy of working in the studio is the opportunity to explore ideas not knowing in what direction they may lead, as my recent landscapes evidence. The landscapes are twisted and manipulated into places where an unknown narrative could take place, in place of the figure, the land, the flora, rocks, branches, and puddles become metaphors for the anthropomorphic. There is no signifier of a specific location; they are more about the sense of place and its effect. The plants and landscape elements are visceral as is the lush landscapes of the rococo painters whose work I admire… My imagined worlds don’t obey the rules of the real but operate in liminal places where they mesh or collide. Where is the edge of the rain, the exact place where it begins and ends? How can a waterfall magically appear out of nowhere or abruptly end? Making art has always been a revelatory process, I do not begin with a pre-ordained plan but relish the unknown.
—Excerpted from https://www.marilynholsing.com/artist-statement.html, accessed 6-23-2021