Marilene Phipps

Biography

MARILÈNE PHIPPS is a painter, poet and fiction writer who was born in Haiti from a French mother and a Haitian father. She grew up in Paris during adolescence, and eventually came to the US for her undergraduate studies in anthropology at the University of CA at Berkeley, and her graduate studies in painting at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Phipps is now a member of the Academy of American Poets and a recipient of the NAACP’s Award of Excellence for outstanding commitment in advancing the culture and causes for communities of color. She held fellowships at the Guggenheim Foundation, Harvard’s Bunting Institute, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, and the Center for the Study of World Religions.
As a painter, Phipps has presented and lectured about her work in numerous places such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Art Institute of Boston.
Her paintings can be seen in several public collections in the US and abroad, such as the Museum of the NCAAA in Boston, the Fuller Museum of Art in MA, the Mexicarte Museum in Texas, the Mattatuck Museum and the Discovery Museum in CT where she won the prize for best painting. Her work was shown at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Cairo Museum of Modern Art, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, and the Mupanah Museum in Haiti.
During her work as a writer, Phipps’s collection, The Company of Heaven: Stories from Haiti, won the 2010 Iowa Short fiction Award. Her poetry won the 1993 Grolier prize, and her collection, Crossroads and Unholy Water, won the 2000 Crab Orchard Poetry Prize. Her memoir, Unseen Worlds, was released in 2018; it was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Her new novel, House of Fossils, was released in March 2020; it was a finalist both for the International Book Awards and the National Indie Excellence Award 2020. House of Fossils was voted by Kirkus Reviews as The Best Books 2020.
Phipps also edited the Jack Kerouac Collected Poems for The Library of America, and
contributed her own work to American anthologies and collections such as The Best American Short Stories; Harvard Divinity Bulletin; The Beacon Best; Haiti Noir: The Classics; Others Will Enter the Gates; Ploughshares; River Styx; Callaloo; Dove Song as well as New Caribbean Poetry for Carcanet Press, England.

Artist Statement

I paint to celebrate Creation and my participation in it.
My work draws from the powerful sensations and visual excitement of childhood that linger in me. This was a time when the physical world held untranslatable magic when people and animals seemed mysteriously connected to their surroundings and to an invisible yet palpable realm.
I aim for beauty, poetry, truth, and order, focusing on enchantment instead of the expression of my inner world. I lean towards a measure of realism instead of complete abstraction. My compositions depict people, animals, landscapes and still lifes as metaphors for particular states of being sensed in the silence of emotion, the portent of a moment, the spirit of a place.
I invite viewers into a dialogue by presenting them with an idea in visual terms, one related to the human and physical world we share. I enjoy raising aesthetic, moral, social, psychological and spiritual issues that have universal relevance.

The overtones of my earlier work have been about promoting the knowledge, appreciation and respect for Haiti and its culture, wanting to show the inherent universality of religious needs and beliefs. The undertones of that work have dealt with addressing issues of negative stereotypes about black people, and negative racial identity fostered by these stereotypes. But my participation in Creation and in the world via artistic expression demands from me repeated, ongoing internal adjustments. The Haiti of my youth progressively distances itself from my current reality. I now move in a varied American culture that influences my sensibility and inspiration.

I start my creative process when an image presents itself to my mind, entices me, and imposes itself. I feel commanded. When the visualization of the idea is firm and I am confident, I go to organize it on canvas. I draw with a brush and diluted paint. When the outlines of the image are established, I meditate on the color scheme that I will use. This is mostly a mental play on alternatives, because color had already presented itself along with the image. Afterwards, I prepare the paint. I use mostly cadmium colors, mixed with black or white to create the myriad hues I plan on. Meditation and mixing are done sitting down, but I paint standing up. Changes and additions to the initial color scheme happen all along the painting process, and so the painting is always a surprise at the end.

I paint in silence, and alone. I work one piece at a time and stay with it until I feel it is done. I have rarely destroyed a finished work. I keep holding its hand until it has crossed over to our world, singing its song. It lives so that its message, its color, and its complex, intricate, inviting surface texture and skin might reveal the attentiveness of my heart.

Country United States

Website www.marilenephipps.com