The Layers

Marianne’s Italian background influences her painting, as the subject matter/theme explores her heritage. Although she was born in Australia, the family and friends that she has met on her travels to her parents’ homeland have given Marianne that all important link to her Italian heritage.
Marianne’s ideas develop from incidents that occurred during her childhood, memories and nostalgia. By exploring the more traditional elements of the Italian way of life, the important family unit, their exuberant love of farming the land, whether it be a 5 acre lot or a small garden in the suburbs, Marianne’s paintings celebrate not only the extension of her Italian heritage but also the preservation of these much celebrated but almost dying traditions. Marianne’s paintings combine elements including old Italian family and childhood photographs, to explore themes involving family, childhood, memory, identity and migration.
The vague figures are in abstract settings as Marianne does not want to place them in any one human context. Marianne collages her black and white family photographs with more recent photographs taken together with her drawings of nature (plants, trees and their fruits); she then integrates the image using oil paint, a medium she loves to use for its materiality. The plants and fruits in Marianne’s paintings function metaphorically for social situations and human relationships representing people’s desires and expressions of identity.