Artists Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 12, 12:00-7:00pm

Rob and Marius have been working artists in the Bay Area for over 30 years. Both painters use a painterly and very coloristic approach to their work.

[Pictured: Marius Starkey, View from my window]

Marius Starkey is an American painter known for his bold colors with emphasis on landscapes and figurative paintings.

The Impressionists inspire Marius’s work. Seeing their original paintings in person, he reveled in their colors and learned how the artists applied their paints. Throwing himself into his own paintings with a fury and exploring his own ways to paint that pushed him into different realms of visions.

When immersed in a painting, Marius finds himself surprised by the results of his own work occasionally even surprising himself. His inner vision propels him to constantly develop and refine his own unique style of painting.

Rob Cox paints the urban landscape as well as figures and everyday objects. Rob celebrates the material of paint and wants the viewer to see the process of painting. The scumbled brush strokes and lumps of paint are as integral to the work as the illusion of a roadway in the distance.

Rob’s work is a Pop style with muddy underpinnings. It germinates in the works of Paul Cezanne, David Park and Richard Diebenkorn. Representational painting is a foundation to push images beyond their literal explanation and then pull back into the object to create a restrained tension of something slightly off kilter.

Strongly influenced by Wayne Thiebaud, Elmer Bischoff and Park, he continues in the Northern California figurative tradition. Paint is applied impasto with aggressive strokes, in broad swaths. The objective is to describe and define form and shape using color.