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Ad Code: 4
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An example of work by Marla Anne Baggetta
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Marla Baggetta was born in Buffalo, New York in 1962 and spent much of her early childhood in upstate New York. For a brief time her family lived in Ohio before moving to Newbury Park, California in 1969. Her artistic inclinations were evident from early on. She took art lesson from various local artists and was constantly drawing and painting; animals were a popular subject in many of these early works. After graduating from Newbury Park High School early and attending classes at Moorpark Junior College, Marla attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA and received her BFA with honors in 1983.
Upon graduation from the Art Center, Marla worked as a commercial illustrator
working for such clients as Walt Disney, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Nissan Motors
and Houghton Mifflin Publishing, to name a few.
On weekends, Baggetta would attend pastel drawing sessions held by Vernon
Wilson, an Art Center instructor and well known pastel artist. Marla began falling in love with the pastel medium and honed her figure drawing skills. Marla also began teaching illustration classes at Art Center as well.
In 1986 Marla married Mike, whom she met at Art Center. Mike was a graphic designer and art director, and she and Mike collaborated on many commercial
assignments in the period between 1984 and 1990. From 1985 to 1992, Marla
and Mike lived in the South Bay region of Los Angeles working from their home studio.
In March 1990 Marla had a son, Kevin Michael, who was born prematurely at only 6 months. She stopped working on her commercial illustration assignments and teaching to care for her son and in 1992 also had another child, Keith Anthony.
Marla and Mike decided LA was not the best place to raise a family and moved to Oregon in 1993. Marla was taken by the beauty of Oregon's rural landscapes and almost immediately began working in pastel. In doing so, she joined a long standing tradition of Northwest painters. Her goal was to make unique compositions of the local landscape and to overcome the cliches of the genre. Color, composition and passages of light she orchestrated with the goal of producing a cohesive whole.
Of her subject and medium, she says: "Landscape painting is a very playful and active process; working with shape, form, light and texture to achieve a feeling for what I see". "I'm trying to capture a moment in which all these elements come together to a point of balance and harmony. Each one of my original pastels is done on museum grade sanded pastel paper that I tone with acrylic paint. I use a variety of brands of soft pastel such as Schmincke, Unison, Terry Ludwig, and Diane Townsend. Each brand of pastel has different characteristics that I use to accomplish a variety of strokes and washes within a piece.
The final painting is lightly sprayed with a fine fixative before framing. Each piece depicts an image that is either based on photographs that Iíve taken myself or is done plein air, (on site). My painting process is a very active one where my first marks and impressions are usually bold and bright. Then I settle in and make adjustments and assessments. The last marks are usually slow and quiet strokes as I am making small, deliberate moves rather than large, quick ones."
Baggetta has exhibited extensively in the Pacific Northwest and has received numerous awards for her landscape paintings including Best in Show from the Oregon Pastel Society 2003; Best of Show two-dimensional at Art in the Pearl 2001; Arts for the Parks Top 100, 1999; and been included in numerous regional and national pastel society exhibitions. She was featured in the February 2004 issue of "The Pastel Journal" magazine and has a book recently released entitled 'Step by Step Pastel' written by Marla Baggetta and published by Walter Foster Publishing.
Marla also teaches locally. "Teaching is very satisfying.because you must verbalize all the things youíve learned to do intuitively. It makes you walk your talk and forces a certain formal basis for what is mostly right brained. I love to see students that are tentative, start to delve in."
She has taught at Art Center College of Design, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Creative Arts Community-Menucha and West Linn/Wilsonville Community Education as well as in various workshop settings.
Marla now resides in the community of West Linn, Oregon with her husband
Mike, who is also an artist and designer, and her two sons Kevin, now 14, and Keith age 11.
SPECIAL AWARDS:
PASTEL SOCIETY OF OREGON, ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP SHOW 2003,
BEST IN SHOW INTERNATIONAL PASTEL SOCIETY, BRONZE AWARD, 2002
PASTEL SOCIETY OF OREGON, ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP SHOW 2002,
SPONSORS AWARD
ART IN THE PEARL, BEST 2-D WORK, 2002
ARTS FOR THE PARKS, TOP 100, SEPT 1999 - JUNE 2000
LAKE OSWEGO VISUAL CHRONICLE, PURCHASE AWARD 1998
Submited by the artist, February 2004.
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