The Lightness of Being Painting

Mara Safransky is a Portland, OR-based artist working in paint and pastel. Her practice is fueled by a desire to create compelling visual experiences that offer viewers engagement with the evocative, often transcendent qualities of color, shape, and texture. After growing up in the rural mountains of North Carolina and earning a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Mara moved to Los Angeles and began her professional art practice. Since that time, her work has been shown in New York and Los Angeles, acquired by private collectors, and sold by interior design-focused retailers. Mara describes her heavily-layered oil paintings as occupying the space between abstract expressionism and color-field painting. She sees each as an invitation into a freely-associative experience—one she intends open the door to interpretation and reflection, in an ever-evolving conversation between artwork and viewer.