L.A. artist's works bring beautiful chaos to Brandstater

Splashed across a 74” x 102” canvas the painting “Blue World” bursts into a mesmerizing discord of blues, muted yellows, rusty hues and purples that erupt and pull together to create structure-like images floating into and around each other, drawing the viewer inside another world.

The scene of synchronous, beautiful chaos and cohesion is the work of Los Angeles artist Marie Thibeault who derives inspiration from cataclysmic events, environmental concerns and the history and practice of painting. Her large-scale oil works emanate from the artist's love of color. They incorporate images from her voluminous drawings of forms and figures inspired by images in news articles or on the Internet, including stories about disastrous events. The drawings serve as characters or parts, which she uses to construct her paintings.

A lifelong artist, Thibeault frequently works on 10 to 15 pieces at once, she said in a 2011 article for “Art Ltd.” Painting, she says, is an activity that “keeps you steeped in beauty and discovery. Never boring, [it is] sometimes joyful, sometimes heartbreaking too.”

The artist is bringing her talent to La Sierra University. Beginning this month Thibeault will exhibit a series of paintings and drawings at Brandstater Gallery in a show titled “Emanations: Paintings and Works on Paper.” The exhibit will run Jan. 9 - Feb. 13, 2012. An artist's reception will be held Feb. 13, 6-8 p.m. at the gallery.

The gallery is located at La Sierra University's Visual Art Center 112, Building 1. Gallery hours are Mon. - Thurs., 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. and Sun., 2 - 5 p.m. For additional information call Brandstater Gallery at 951-785-2959.

Thibeault's work is on exhibit at the George Lawson Gallery in Culver City. Information about her exhibits and professional background, image samples and commentary on her work is available at these sites: http://www.georgelawsongallery.com/artists/m_thibeault_bio.html, http://mariethibeault.com/.

Thibeault's Brandstater exhibit will include the following works:

“Blue World” - Oil on Canvas

“Breach” - Oil on Canvas

“Arena” - Oil on Canvas

“Prospect” - Oil on Canvas

“Remain” - Oil on Canvas

“Semaphore” - Oil on Canvas

“Pipe Dream” - Oil on Canvas

“Facsimile” - Oil on Canvas

Thibeault's abstract paintings have typically been inspired by landscape and more recently by large-scale disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. The artist, who holds a strong interest in physics, merges images from her stacks of developmental drawings, works and reworks her paintings as many as 100 times to attain a desired goal of superior structure rising from disorder. “It's a kind of Frankenstein thing, I take many images from a massive image bank. To feed my imagination I'm always looking for new structures,” she said in the “Art Ltd.” article.

A San Francisco Chronicle story in April 2011 summed up Thibeault's efforts this way. “But the drama of Thibeault's paintings consists not in their evocation of calamities but in how they show her wresting her attention free of dire events' dispiriting power.”

Thibeault has served as a professor of art at California State University, Long Beach since 1989. She tells students, “believe in your goals, work hard and know yourself enough to cultivate creativity.”

PR Contact: Larry Becker

Executive Director of University Relations

La Sierra University

Riverside, California

951.785.2460 (voice)