Willie Marlowe

Willie Marlowe has shown paintings in solo and invitational exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Her work is included in museum, university, corporate and private collections, and has been supported by grants from Artist’s Space, NYC, and by numerous Strategic Opportunity Stipend awards from the New York Foundation on the Arts. She has been a visiting artist in Barbados, West Indies, in Cortona, Italy, and in Wexford, Ireland, where she had a ten year retrospective exhibition at the Wexford Arts Center.

She has had artist's residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, NY, the Cill Rialaig Project in Ballinskelligs, Ireland, Emily Harvey Foundation for the Arts, Venice, Italy, Milkwood International Residencies, Cesky Krumlov, South Bohemia, Czech Republic and Atelier Cres, Cres Town, Croatia and Obras Holland, Renkum, The Netherlands. She was a member of the Albany-Tula Alliance delegation to Russia; Tula is Albany's sister city in Russia. She was invited by the Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University as a visiting artist, and gave a presentation on her paintings done during residencies in Ireland and Italy.

Her work is informed by travel, going to museums and archaeological sites in Europe, the Yucatan and Russia. She often works on intimately scaled acrylic paintings on paper. Her luminous surfaces are achieved by using an intense palette and successive layers of translucent glazes.

She taught painting and drawing in the Department of Visual Arts, The Sage College of Albany, and has taught watercolor in two of The Sage Colleges’ international studies programs, “Sage at Oxford”, Somerville College, Oxford University, and “Celtic Connections” in Scotland and Ireland. She has had two sabbatical leaves to paint in 1986 and 2005. She is now Professor Emerita, The Sage Colleges.

Studio at The Emily Harvey Foundation, Venice, Italy

Burano, Italy

Artist's Statement

My early influences were medieval manuscript illuminations and Persian and Indian miniature paintings. I was attracted to the clear color, intricate detail and sense of space. I continue to be drawn to the focus and presence these images can have. My paintings, often intimately scaled, are mostly abstract, but many have references to ancient art and archaeology.