MarceliTS Art

Using several different traditional mediums, I create immersive worlds and scenes within my works with many small details and heavy use of perspective. My pieces portray various scenes ranging from lively amusement parks to the shadowy unknown.

Artist Statement

The goal of my art is to create visual pieces that either depict an immersive scene and or have some sort of visual storytelling, sometimes even combining the two. Working from imagination allows me to build new worlds and watch a new narrative unfold each time. I enjoy creating strange and fictitious scenes and worlds because I’ve always enjoyed seeing what kinds of worlds and characters others create through their art and other media. Sean Andrew Murray’s Gateway, Trenton Doyle Hancock’s Moundverse, even things like the tightly crafted world of Avatar the Last Airbender or the insanely thought-out world of the Splatoon video game series have always grabbed my attention the most. I’d like to replicate world creation like that in my own works and see what kinds of strange scenes I can come up with.

During my time as an undergraduate at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, I had my own studio space where I could experiment a lot with my art. In my time there I made three series of works that were all made using different mediums and portray different things. One is a series of powdered graphite and conte crayon drawings that portray shadowy atmospheric scenes that show just enough to create a world for the viewer but also leave out enough for it to still seem mysterious. The second group of works is a series of paintings that show the 100-year period between the 1860s to the 1960s when British railways relied on steam locomotives. Each painting depicts a scene involving at least one locomotive as well as the railway men that worked with them. My final series is a pencil drawn and pen inked one that relies solely on my pencil and ink line work which I use to create large scenes with various characters and locations pulled from my imagination.

While they weren’t part of my main three series I explored in college, I also have a series of illustrations. These stray a little from my other three series but they do still share a lot of my artistic tropes and are a good representation of my interests as well as the kind of art I work on when I’m not working on the other series. I also see it as a good reflection of what’s in a lot of my sketch books.

These series are different in terms of medium and subject matter, at first glance a viewer might not even tell they were done by the same artist. That being said all three of these series do share several things in common such as the use of perspective and movement, however the most prominent element in all of my series is the creation of immersive environments. All of the pieces in each series portray scenes and worlds that pull the viewer in. I include many details and layers in my drawings that give the viewer something new to look at. My use of perspective in both my drawings and paintings also help with sucking the viewer into the piece through the use of objects that are either coming at them or moving away from them. The most perspective heavy objects can pull the viewer into the piece and using overlapping and layered elements, the viewer’s eyes can move to a different object. My powdered graphite series works a little differently, several pieces do use my perspective technique but there are some that use values to draw the viewer instead. Every graphite piece uses bright lights as well as very dark darks to grab a viewer’s attention instead of objects lunging at them. 

My art is very much an extension of my personal interests and fascinations. Trains were very much a part of my life from when I was only a year or two old and they’ve always stuck with me since. Rollercoasters and amusement parks, which are sometimes the subject of my drawings and illustrations, are also a big interest of mine that started around five years ago. And the atmospheric scenes are a look into my interest in foggy landscapes and unsettling situations. I have always thought that foggy landscapes were super interesting and mysterious to look at. 

In conclusion all three series take my various interests and turns them into imaginative scenes and worlds that immerse the viewer with details, perspectives, secrets, and narratives.