Caroline Z. Marcos | Houston, Texas USA
Caroline Zakaria-Marcos was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1980 and migrated with her family; to the United States in 1989. Having received a Bachelors degree in Psychology and a Bachelors degree in Studio Art from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Caroline went on to pursue a Masters in Art Therapy in Belmont California at Nortre Dame de Namur University, Graduated 2005. She is currently living, teaching and creating art in Houston Texas with her husband David Marcos.
I am in love with color and form. I use them to create works about meditation and introspection. For me it is an act of meditation itself to make the work and I often explore personal narratives, symbols and archetypes, much like the traditional meditative imagery of mandalas. Some of my pieces tell a story, with the archetypal symbols, like birds, and femininity which allude to a memory or a dream, the past and present.
In this particular body of work I incorporate text as a pictorial element that sometimes clarifies or convolutes the narrative. Text is both a visual element and an information tool. Abstracted color and natural forms are overlaid with text, collage material and encaustic wax. This approach to working in mixed media lends itself to creating a visceral world made with multiple layers, an approach that imbues the work with meaning. Therefore, it is the layering process that acts as a metaphor for the layering of the soul, the depth of the unconscious which is the well, from which my imagery is extracted. As an Orthodox Christian born in Egypt, and as an American, two main figures have influenced my life; that of the American artist Georgia O’Keefe and the father of monasticism, St. Anthony the Great. I especially admire the quiet solitude which both of these figures spent their lives trying to capture. I believe Georgia O'Keefe couldn’t have brought the world's attention to seemingly insignificant natural imagery, giving presence to bones, flowers and clouds, without her quiet solitude in the New Mexico desert. This quiet solitude can take one to a desert within, much like the desert of Egypt, where the first monastic, St. Anthony the Great set foot to venture the same internal terrain. There he discovered light and dark, deceptions and truth and struggled to hold onto the light and truth. The inner desert is full of rich unconscious imagery that I’m excited to elucidate everyday.
