The California Sunset, Viewed from Inside Painting

annamarous.com Marous (b.1978) had been painting as an autodidact alongside another career since her early twenties. In 2017, she took on various advanced courses at the Visual Arts Center and at L'Atelier Circulaire in Montreal and committed herself to painting as a professional. She invested herself in artistic collaborations and private mentorships. She also touched on photography and etching and has had an ongoing study of modern and contemporary art. Her work can now be found in collections across the globe. Colour and atmosphere are at the center of Marous' compositions. Her works navigate between the figurative and the abstract with a manifest sensitivity and an appeal for evasion, travel, playfulness and cinematographic beauty. Versatility follows her into her artistic personality. Her themes speak of a love of world culture, natural beauty, art history as the sources that drew her towards her own path. Expressionism comes out as the dominant style but her paintings are poetic and tender despite their luscious colours. The influence of the modern masters and the school of Paris are frank: Matisse, Klee, Munch, Modigliani; all are present in her work but she leads on with a contemporary and more graphic print of some classic subjects such as still lives and abstract works. Marlene Dumas, Peter Doig and Matthew Wong are her favorite contemporary artists for their sincerity and unique elevation of their craft in a way that is in continuity with the past. Marous speaks about painting in this way: "Art is freedom. It is a never-ending conversation. If you summon the courage, painting offers the possibility to discover where your intuitions lead you, free from constraints other than those brought about by your medium and surface. It is a dance of the encounter with paint- a dance where you get drawn in so deep, and you hope to catch the hand of the viewer."