Courses at The Fintry Trust

In June I started to offer courses for The Fintry Trust, see the flyers below. The offer (a friend had recommended me) came unexpectedly and as a kind of gift. I had just cancelled a show in London due to Covid-19.

Working online on zoom seems one of those strange and positive outcomes of a general crisis; discovering that it is possible to engage with people, see their uncovered faces, saving long journeys to attend meetings.

These courses provide a great opportunity for me to expand my practice stronger again into research, balancing painting/drawing and text research/writing, a way of working both sides of the brain that perfectly suits my needs/wants, which I could especially thrive on during my PhD research. However, working for, organising and preparing exhibitions in the last years interrupted proper continuity in this way.

Currently, or better still (after all these years) I am fascinated by alchemical medieval manuscripts and illuminations. And the preparations for the Fintry courses turned out to push me again and inevitably into intense engagement with alchemical ideas, symbols, frameworks; in particular with regards to Splendor Solis (again, this time more in detail) and Aurora Consurgens, which has a unique slant on the Feminine. Working with Aurora will continue into a larger project over the next year.

I have profited immensely from this research, and sharing the results with those people who have booked my courses out of curiosity or pure interest in alchemy and its philosophical and ‘spiritual’ potential, has been/is a deeply rewarding experience for me.

Future courses will be around Cy Twombly’s works relating to Rainer Maria Rilke, then around Nicholas Poussin’s late mythological landscapes (in the first half of 2021); those who know me a bit, will recognise the names and subjects from long standing interest.

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Introductory course on Splendor Solis for Fintry Trust online

I’m looking forward to running this introductory online course for the Fintry Trust (info below). 
I’ll be focussing on the alchemical book illuminations for ‘Splendor Solis’ (early Renaissance), on aspects of alchemical symbolism and transformation, and also on connections to my own painted works, which refer repeatedly to it. Splendor Solis is a unique set of scenarios that has, despite its age, a lot to say with regards to otherness, outside and inside, and living open towards a transformative life.

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2022 Show and link to my supporting text

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I have written a supporting text for the concept of this upcoming show which is currently downloadable here (on curator Jo Hummel’s site) and will be on this blog after the end of the show.

Newsletter October 2019

In March this year we went to Gdansk where Made in Britain - 82 Painters of the 21st Century at the Muzeum Naradowe opened, a presentation of works of the Priseman Seabrook Collection (one of them mine). I felt very grateful for this opportunity and greatly enjoyed meeting other artists involved, the curators and collectors, and spending some time together. 

The other highlight was Ennui Refigured, where I showed new paintings and drawings with Freya Purdue at APT Gallery in London Deptford. The project turned out to be great team work, a really inspiring and well received show and, we were told, also our artists talk. The catalogue with an introduction by Ella Clocksin is accessible here online.

My next show of paintings and drawings will October at Yellow Edge Gallery, a new gallery opened by artist Steve Buggle in Gosport. I believe Steve’s gallery project, nurtured by his enthusiasm and knowledge, will become an important venue here in the South. Link to the gallery here.

My upcoming show is called Liminal. The paintings and drawings are mapping thresholds, which deal with dynamics of contemporary identity that concern the perception of reality, the filters of associations, affects and memories, personal and impersonal. Continuously in motion, perceptions shape and shift the borders of identity and spread directly into the networks of society. While seemingly building stable images, they reflect the self between imagination and observation, between various screens and forces outside and inside. 

Liminal will run from October 22nd - November 2nd 1-5pm, Sunday and Monday closed.

Private view: October 22nd 7-9pm.

It would be great to see you!


Address: Yellow Edge Gallery - 107 Stoke Road - Gosport PO12 1LR 

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In November, I'll be hosting a show of new paintings by my friend and colleague Ella Clocksin: The Sound of Trees. I'm very much looking forward to this event. I have always had a special connection to her work and feel that her new body of work, which relates to our visual, internal and existential connection with nature, makes an important contribution to what a lot of us think currently about.

The opening of The Sound of Trees with artist's talk at Rookley Manor Studio will be Friday 15th Nov 2019 6.30pm.
Ella will talk about her work in discussion with myself. There will be something small to eat and drinks afterwards so as to spend some time together.

Please RSVP me by responding to this mail for the evening of Friday 15th November and to join us for food afterwards; alternatively, there will be a Facebook event later on where you can select ‘Going’.
Or meet the artist during the project show on Saturday 16th November, 12 noon to 5pm.

The address is Rookley Manor Studio, Niton Road, PO38 3NR (from Rookley Green about 150 yards on the left of Niton Road, green iron railings).

Ella, an artist, writer and tutor, living and working in Oxford, says about her new work: ‘Forests in myth and story are both frightening and exciting. It is all too easy to get lost in the woods. They are places of testing and transformation. Of being lost. And found.
The project site is the ancient tracts of Wytham Woods, dating from the last Ice Age. Wytham is a University of Oxford research centre for woodland eco-systems.
The project touches on the ways we exist alongside, but also as part of, our landscape. We are part of the ecology we inhabit.
And the paintings are notations of that experience - neurological and sensory, poetic and metaphoric - of being deep in the woods. The painting practice responds directly to a living ecology, as the external landscape intersects with the internal landscape.’

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My first show of 2020 will be in May, paintings and drawings - focusing on alchemical dynamics and responding to Renaissance illuminations - at the Westminster Reference Library in London (close to Trafalgar Square and National Gallery). The show will be called Folium. Details to follow.

In terms of teaching, this year I have been running experiential painting classes as part of the Portfolio Preparation Course, organised by Nick Martin at Quay Arts here on the island and at Hawkwood College as part of Unfolding Our Light, in cooperation with Michael Eastwood and Kelly Peacy. I do enjoy the team spirit and it has been a pleasure to see people leaping into and learning from spontaneous and individual approaches to painting.

It would be a pleasure to see you at the Yellow Edge Gallery or at my studio in Rookley this year.

Please have a look at new work on my website, thank you!

With all best wishes,

Marius