Marley Freeman Biography

Marley Freeman (b. 1981, Boston, MA) is a New York-based artist who combines the disciplines of abstract and representational painting. Her unique facture is characterized by the hand-mixed gesso, acrylic, and oil paints she uses to create meticulous, psychologically-charged color fields. Through this technical process, she studies the ways in which paint “wants to perform.” “Pigments have their own ways of acting,” Freeman says, “and I became obsessed with learning their traits.” Freeman’s distinct vocabulary of forms is made up of brushy strokes, color washes, and shapes that freely transform across the picture plane. The influence of textile design is evident in her close attention to the textural subtleties of her paints, and her reverence for their surface effects—their impressions in the warp and weft of the canvas.