Marinella Owens

The traditionally composed paintings of flowers and Greek icons, express the peace, relaxation, and spirituality I connect with the act of painting. Rendering oil-on-canvas floral subjects in hues reminiscent of the Renaissance tradition and painting Greek icons with egg tempera on wood, my works may appear starkly divided in two categories, but they are intrinsically linked by a personal symbolism influenced by my deep faith and personal story.

Rather than paint to express the sorrows of the past, my paintings help the viewer escape the stresses of everyday life and retreat to a simpler time where forgotten values are embraced.

Biography

Marinella paints both Greek Icons and beautiful oil-on-canvas paintings of flowers using lush and vibrate colours. Born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1975, her Greek and Italian origins represent her major influences, a Greek sense of beauty and religious faith together with a deep felt sensibility for the Italian Renaissance painters.

Drawing since her early childhood, at the age of 15 bought her first canvas and oils. In 1998 moved for two years to Hania, a town on the Greek Isle of Crete, there she studied the art of Greek Icons in a convent. Consequently decorated a small chapel on the outskirts of Hania with superb Icons, clearly demonstrating her natural talent for colour.

On her return to Switzerland she experimented with many styles and techniques, in 2004 began a series of outstanding floral oil paintings. Having found her own particular language, based on traditional techniques but with a decidedly modern sensibility, the images simply flowed out of her with an ease that only highly creative people can experience.

She found the reaction of those fortune to see the works as strange, "these painting relax me", "they give me a sense of peace and quiet", "the personal symbolism reflects a spirituality rarely seen in today's art", strange because that is what she felt while she was painting them.

2007 is the year Marinella decided she was ready to become a professional artist. She opened her own atelier-gallery in Switzerland and her works can now be seen on several online art galleries. In 2008 her paintings can be seen in exhibitions in New York, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Marinella is to be considered an emerging artist, however, with her knowledge of Renaissance techniques, her talent for colour, and the profound and powerful reaction people have to her paintings she will not remain unknown to the international art public for long.