Marina tells us about herself with a simple Q&A
Q1 Who is Marina?
As a visual artist, maker and performer. Marina Renee-Cemmick's artistic practice is both diverse in both material and process. Drawing serves as a foundation for all her visual work, initiating figurative oil paintings and sculptural forms. With a background in performance and dance the body has always been a central focus to her work and through this vessel she uses personal experience, symbolism and poetic image to explore questions and concepts concerning the human connection, isolation and the duality between mind and body.
Currently based in London she has exhibited across Scotland and South West of England, Japan and London.
Q2 Where do you get your Inspiration?
Inspiration comes in so many forms. Being able to capture something of the life that happens around me. Observing and drawing people is a constant source of inspiration. When I draw I think of the form as a series of abstract shapes and shadows, but it is something more poetic, the essence beneath the surface that one is always trying to make visible.
I love theatre, both watching and participating in workshops and performances. The language of expression through the movement of the body is an endless exploration, a poetic dialogue and continuous source of inspiration.
I use poetry as a tool for processing and later as inspiration for drawings and paintings.
Q3 Did you have any training?
I completed a foundation year at Bournemouth Art University. I studied a BA in fine art at Glasgow School of Art, where I was awarded a placement to study for five months in Kyoto, Japan.
Forms of dance I encountered there and concepts of space continue to influence me. After graduating I won the john Kinross award to travel to Florence before starting an MA at the Royal drawing school.
Q4 How would you describe your art?
I use poetic narratives and the body to create metaphors that investigate the human connection, through figurative drawings, paintings and sculptures.
I often use sheets of metal as my canvas for painting because the emptiness of the reflective surface is closer to that of a blank page and allows the manipulation of building and reducing layers. I work to uncover the human qualities that connect us in a web of interdependence. Primitive bodily senses that keep us living: It's structure, It's beath, It's breathing heart. We are a collective body of feeling, emotion, and communication all taking part in the perpetual cycle of life, death and rebirth.
Q5 What artists inspire you?
From a young age illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, N.C Wyeth, J.H Dowd inspired me to draw.
Jenny Saville was a huge influence on my early paintings. Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgoise, Joseph Beuys, Cathy Killwitz, Peter Doig and Justin Mortimer. Writers Samuel Becket, T.S Elliott and Kate Tempest. Dancers Dimitris Papaioannou and Kazuo Ohno to name a few. Also many of my friends and peers.
Q6 What does Sentiment mean to you?
I'm excited to share a piece of artwork with many people. To each have a selection of an original painting, connecting everyone with an imaginary thread is a beautiful Sentiment.
It is a reminder that we are all part of a collective whole, consciousness, experience.