I paint in search of a world beyond dichotomies, beyond seas of darkness, and beyond the destructive forces of extraction and consumption. My work is a lens for social change towards post-capitalist relities, rooted in radical hope and a necessary reckoning with our dark colonial past and transgenerational traumas.
​
Through my canvases, I engage in a dialogue of color play, crafting stories which aim to pulse with life, energy, and emotional resonance. My process often involves layering over months, if not years, employing various texture mediums and impasto techniques to construct a multidimensional narrative plane.
​
At its most liberating, the process allows me to become a clear channel, where the story each piece wishes to tell unfolds organically, free from my judgments or interference. Each painting emerges as a living entity, breaking through from another realm. My practice is about showing up daily before the canvas in a state of vulnerable openness, ready to listen and let the story materialize.
​
I believe that releasing stories into the world carries immense responsibility, especially at this pivotal moment in our planet’s history. My work seeks to serve by engaging with issues of climate justice and the urgent need for deep societal and systemic change. My hope is that the work can make a small difference, even if it simply challenges us to have difficult conversations.
​
On a personal level, my creative practice is a form of resistance, a defiance against destructive social structures. It embodies a push against a growth-based economic system built on historical injustices, envisioning a time when all beings can live freely, choosing their paths, fostering a world in harmony with our compasionate hearts and the ecosystems that sustain us.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Mara is an internationally renowned filmmaker with films playing on Netflix, Hulu, HBO max, screened in cinemas across the US and Europe and in festivals around the world including Sundance Film Festival, London Film Fest Festival, Hot Docs, Doc NYC and many more. She originally studied fine art, was classically trained but set her paint brushes aside when she started making films in 2005.
In 2019 whilst living in Los Angeles, on one of her daily walks around the neighbourhood, she stumbled upon an unused canvas left on the side of the road. She decided to pick it up and take it home along with some acrylics found at the 99 cent store. With that canvas she started playing, and almost instantly her love for colour and deep need for creative play came rushing back. Week by week and day by day, she started nurturing her creative practice and at the start of 2022 she decided to transition from a career in film to painting full time.
Her current ever-growing creative practice is focused primarily on large scale oil paintings, vibrant colour stories, told through impasto, bold brush strokes, abstract shapes and textures that almost seem to come alive in motion.
She is currently preparing for her second solo exhibition, "A Relational Web of Being and Becoming," while simultaneously expanding her practice into multi-sensory, interdisciplinary realms. She is conceptualizing an ambitious project, now in its research and development phase, that seeks to integrate various modalities to challenge "common sense" perceptions and invite viewers into a dialogue with themes of climate justice and systemic change.