Marsha Thrift Marion

Marsha Thrift Marion has always loved to draw and paint. Being honored with a green ribbon for a colored chalk drawing in the fourth grade peaked her interest in pursuing art in school and private oil painting lessons in high school. She received a BA degree in Applied Art from Converse College in Spartanburg, SC and an AAS degree in Commercial Art & Advertising Design from Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, NC.  She worked in Interior Design and Graphic Arts before returning to her passion of painting and teaching art, in both public and private schools in Winston-Salem. For years, she also taught private lessons in her home studio, which she continues to do to this day.  Teaching art to both children and adults has encouraged Marsha to experiment with almost every medium imaginable — charcoal, pastels, pen and ink, oil, watercolor, acrylic, batik, fabric painting, encaustic, sculpture, collage and mixed media.

Her favorite painting medium is soft pastels on various papers and under paintings, The direct contact with the paper and the explosion of color and texture is exhilarating, although she also loves working in oil and mixed media.  She considers her somewhat impressionistic style as “painterly realism” often with a fascinating touch of abstraction to provide a little mystery for the viewer. Texture and color is dominant in her work as she attempts to portray the beauty of the world around her.