Bio

Born: Cleveland, OH
Lives and Works: Austin, TX

Marilyn Fenn has been creating art in one form or another since early childhood.   In 1985, she returned to college to study fine art -- first at Austin Community College and then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with several of the famed Chicago Imagists and in 1992 received her BFA.   She has continued her studies with fellow SAIC alumnus Noel Robbins of Robbins Studio in Austin, with New York painter Charles Wildbank at a workshop in Tuscany, Italy and most recently with Austin painter Andrew Long.

Following her graduation from art school, Marilyn had a successful career as a visual designer, web designer and illustrator at a major corporation, while she repaid her college loans.

Marilyn was able to return to painting more fully again in 2002.   Since then, she has exhibited her work in numerous juried and invitational group and solo shows, and given art demonstrations, classes and talks.   She is an active member in several local artist organizations, including Austin Visual Arts Association and TexasWax/Austin.   Marilyn's work is collected in private collections across the country and abroad.

Throughout her studies and beyond, Marilyn has worked in a wide range of artistic media -- from sculpture, printmaking, and digital art to most forms of drawing and painting.   Currently, Marilyn works primarily as a painter, working in oil, acrylic and encaustic.

For the past two decades, Marilyn has explored a variety of subject matter ranging from representational landscapes and still lifes to vibrant abstractions -- and many points in between.   Their common thread is an unerring sense of color, and a constant celebration of how paint inhabits a surface.

You can visit her studio during the East Austin Studio Tour or by appointment.

Examples of Marilyn's encaustic paintings -- total abstraction and an abstracted painting of a tornado.