Marie was born and raised on Maui, Hawai'i — an island that teaches, from its beginnings, that life is always in the process of becoming. She trained first as a figurative painter, then followed a less traditional education: community organizing, permaculture farming, meditation, sustainability research, and mental health counseling. None of these chapters have closed; they dance and transform through one another, and have found a shared home in her paintings.

Marie’s works evolved from an exploration of form into the experience of the formless. They are meditations made visible: The clarity of consciousness shining through the branches of thought, sharing its hues, and making its marks.  Each piece begins in silence and in deep unknowing, sitting with an open invitation — not a directive, not a plan — and waiting for the next step to reveal itself. Old companions arrive in the studio too: anxiety, perfectionism, doubt, the impulse to fix. She welcomes them to sit with her and experience the process as it unfolds. No thoughts or emotions threaten the ground of creativity. It is already here, within all of us and all things.

What emerges is something like long-exposure photography in the night: the aperture of awareness patiently held wide in the darkness, until the blooms and songs within it slowly reveal themselves. Simply by remaining open, she brings to light that which cannot be sought.  These paintings are the record of a life spent mastering what the light already reveals — and then choosing to venture further, into what is unseen and out of reach.