Marlee Hoffman: On technique and being In the Moment

by Martha Rock Keller

Marlee talked with me in the gallery about her painting and her technique - all of it enhanced by the focused close observation shown by all the great realist painters and by being "in the moment."

She begins each day with a 3 mile jog and an attentiveness to "smelling the roses." "It's all about getting as much as I can from each day," she says. "Feeling it. Enjoying it."

As for the "moments" of technique, Marlee works from photographs and a lightly penciled drawing on paper. She uses Winsor/Newton brand watercolors and a limited palette of five pigments: two blues - French Ultramarine and Cobalt, two yellows - Winsor Yellow and Winsor Lemon, and one red - Alizarin Crimson. She paints on 140 lb. Arches watercolor paper dampened and taped to a 1/2 inch watercolor board. She masks the light areas with a brush filled with W/N liquid masking agent (which she keeps in a bowl of water and dish soap to keep the brush from getting ruined by the masking liquid). Then she begins layering with washes of color - up to five in the darkest darks. She mixes blacks with ultramarine, alizarin, and lemon yellow. After removing the mask she layers the lightest lights. Note her skillful handling of strong contrasts in the light and shadow areas of "The Abbey" painting with soft-edged color in the lavender. One triangular rooftop glares almost white in the strong sunlight.

Here's a game any viewer of this exhibition can play: find the crosses. "Among the first couple things I do when painting," she says, is to place a small cross (about 1/8 inch high) in the composition. "The funny part is that no one noticed it for years." The crosses refer to the fact that for Marlee, painting is "something God and I do together." It's not that easy to find ALL the crosses, but it's a fun challenge to one's powers of observation.  (Details of 2 of her paintings are shown above and below.)

"God is in the details" could be her aesthetic. We checked on Google to find the phrase may have originated with the French writer, Flaubert, and is associated with the German architect, Mies van der Rohe and others. To extend the international reach of Marlee's aesthetic, here's Japanese Buddhist, Shunryu Suzuki's, take on the "magic of the moment:"

Moment after moment,

everything comes out of nothingness

this is the true joy of life.