Artist's Statement
I paint lonely, abandoned things. Sometimes eerie, haunting things. My subjects are the rural – farmhouses, schoolhouses, prairie churches, barns, windmills, and military structures; and the institutional – nineteenth century insane asylums, hospitals, and sanatoriums. I also explore some not-so-abandoned historic buildings and their architectural details. Sometimes people (we can be lonely too). The fox that guides my visions. Using traditional media (watercolor, oil, colored pencil, graphite) and recently, digital media (using Procreate) I give expression to a world of shadows just outside attention.
When people forget a place and move on, there is something they leave behind – it's there in that paint that peels away revealing layers of other paint colors underneath; it's in those cracks in the windows; it's in the sink full of dishes left waiting to be washed and put away but never are; it's in the patterns the light makes coming through the windows, touching the floor here or the wall over there; it's in the way the grass outside moves in the wind like ocean waves; it's in the lonesome tree whose leaves rustle as they tell what they've seen, if only we could understand their whispers.
When people forget a place and move on, there is something they leave behind – it's there in that paint that peels away revealing layers of other paint colors underneath; it's in those cracks in the windows; it's in the sink full of dishes left waiting to be washed and put away but never are; it's in the patterns the light makes coming through the windows, touching the floor here or the wall over there; it's in the way the grass outside moves in the wind like ocean waves; it's in the lonesome tree whose leaves rustle as they tell what they've seen, if only we could understand their whispers.
Bio
Mariah Masilko grew up in Grand Forks, ND and graduated from Central High School. At the University of Oklahoma, she studied architecture for two semesters, then moved to Minneapolis and received a BA in Studio Arts from the University of Minnesota in 1997. She had pieces in the North Dakota Museum of Art Silent Art Auction in 2002 and 2006 to 2009, 2014, and in the Autumn Art Auction in 2008 and 2014. In 2006 she and photographer Mike Mohaupt exhibited Forgotten North Dakota at the Third Street Gallery in Grand Forks. From January through June of 2007, Forgotten North Dakota was displayed at the Heritage Center at the Capitol in Bismarck. Mariah had a painting in the Foot in the Door 4 exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and her work was on display at Artifex Manuum Spa & Gallery in uptown Minneapolis from October 2010 through January 2011, and again in 2014. One of her watercolors was shown at the Minnesota State Fair in August 2012. Her work was again at the Third Street Gallery in September 2012 along with the photography of Emma Katka in an exhibit entitled Whispers. She won first place for her photograph of Island Station in the Reflections on Ramsey exhibit at the Landmark Center in St. Paul, which ran from July through December 2014. Her work was featured in two exhibits sponsored by Springboard for the Arts - Lake Region in Fergus Falls, MN: Essence of Memory & Space: Art Inspired by the Kirkbride in 2014, and Beauty is Therapy in 2015. In 2016 she had three pieces in the show Art of Darkness: Inspired by the Paranormal at the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts in Fridley, MN.