Marilyn Church

Marilyn Church, born 1940 in New York City, is a painter. Church has taught at Pratt Institute and FIT and has been a courtroom artist for the New York Times & TV. She has a BFA from Pratt Institute and has done MFA work at Indiana University and Pratt Institute. She has also studied at Visual Arts and the Art Students League.

Marilyn Church’s work has primarily focused on the abstraction of the figure. Although she sometimes strays into what seems like total abstraction, the figure has been a continuous theme throughout her career. The emotional impact of the stories of victims and those charged, first fascinated her as a court room artist. Those feelings resonate in her paintings and mixed media works. Now, freed from any prescribed boundaries of subject matter, her work is based on improvisation, dream images and intuition. In this process of discovery, a narrative eventually emerges however illusive it appears. It is often cloaked in mystery, eroticism, and ambiguity.

Church’s drawings have been collected by both the Smithsonian Institute and the Library of Congress which has 4,500 of her pieces in their archives. She has shown extensively in New York City and on the East End of Long Island. Some of her solo shows have been at The Julian Beck Gallery in Bridgehampton, NY 2013, The Bernaducci Meisel Gallery 57th Street NYC in 2008, and the Roger Smith Gallery in NYC. Noteworthy group exhibits include: Carter Burden 2015, Uprise Gallery, Chelsea 2014, The Brucennial, Chelsea 2014 and Peter Marcelle Gallery Bridgehampton 2013. Guild Hall Museum awarded her Best Mixed Media Artist in 2008. She has received a NY Press Art Award and a TV Emmy. A book of her art, The Art of Justice was published by Quirk Books in 2006.

Websites: www.marilynchurch.com and www.marilynchurchart.com

Exhibitions

January 9 - February 5, 2020
Reconfigured

November 1 - November 22, 2016
Crime and Passion

August 13 - September 3, 2015
Representational Group Exhibition

July 9 - July 30, 2015
12x12 Group Exhibition