THOUGHTS.

Compelled by elemental polarities at the core of the cosmos, nature and human behavior, my work conveys the essence of opposing realities that when brought together, create a harmonious sense of wholeness that resonates with universal truth. Through varying compositional structures and rich, luminous surfaces created with oil paint, brushes and other tools, the work elicits an experience that is at once intuitively familiar yet definitively unrecognizable.

Through the power of visual storytelling manifested in the physicality of paint, my work realizes the reciprocity between our tangible existence and the intangible realm.

I believe the process of making abstract art makes us whole human beings by integrating intuitive sensory feelings with linear logical thinking, through mediums and tools that shape the physicality of expression. By generating wholeness through the creation of art rooted in the triad of intellectual, emotional and physical we are, in an ever so tiny or large way, helping to heal our fractured world.

ROOTS.

The daughter of architects Ehrman B. and Hermine S. Mitchell, Marianne grew up in a home that her parents designed outside of Philadelphia, and where she and husband Bruce Schmit later raised their own family. The architecture of an open floor plan defined by glass facades and stone walls framing the Pennsylvania landscape, offered an environment of contrasts held in harmony that profoundly shaped Marianne's artistic vision.

FACTS.

Marianne earned a BFA in painting from Washington University in Saint Louis, with post-graduate work in Japan, China, and at the Vermont Studio Center. A Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship recipient, Marianne has shown work nationally in New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Denver, and internationally in Scotland and Germany. Her work hangs in many important collections including The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Pew Charitable Trust, and Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Center. Marianne’s paintings are in private collections across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.

A lifelong Philadelphian, Marianne and her husband lived in Denver CO from 2011 to 2019 when they returned to the Philadelphia area where they now reside in a historic Pennsylvania farmhouse.

Read Marianne’s Resume HERE.