Marika Wolfe

Stockton, California

Marika Wolfe, Down River, 9 x 12" oil

Marika Wolfe’s recent paintings are for the most part, landscapes. Many are executed en plein air; others are studio pieces derived from her plein air sketches and paintings. Since 2002 she has participated in a number of plein air painting events and exhibitions, including "Sea to Shining Sea: A Reflection of America." This exhibit opened at the Haggin Museum in Stockton in 2004, and is currently touring the country. In the past year her paintings have also been exhibited in New Orleans, in Sonora, California, in Los Gatos, California, and at the Reynolds Gallery of the University of the Pacific. Wolfe’s work has been shown locally and nationally since she arrived in California in 1971. She earned a bachelor’s degree in art at Brown University, and a Master’s degree at the Rhode Island School of Design, both in Providence, Rhode Island. She has taught art in the Oakland, California public schools, and currently holds the position of Visual Resources Specialist in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of the Pacific. She is also an adjunct professor of drawing at Pacific.

In speaking of her work, quotes the late poet Czeslaw Milosz:

"Description demands intense observation, so intense that the veil of everyday habit falls away and what we paid no attention to, because it struck us as so ordinary, is revealed as miraculous."

-----Czeslaw Milosz

Wolfe says:
"The miracle of the ordinary, so eloquently stated by Milosz, distills my reason for working in a representational, figurative mode. Intense observation, and the process of visual description is a constant challenge. Plein air painting, like life drawing, is a physical and mental sport in which I have to commit myself to the image and to the immediate. With each piece, whether I succeed or fail in big hopes and little details, I hope, at least momentarily, to lift the veil."