Mariah Cameron Scee

My work explores the themes of loss, absence, and imagined lives. At first glance, my subjects are interior scenes and landscapes. With further study, a viewer will notice that my pieces are narrative and cyclical. The same characters and places reappear and repeat. Every space is one I am intimately familiar with; woods that I have hiked through and sketched, my familial ranch in Montana, the jagged rocks of my past. I regularly explore images of knit and fiber pieces made by my own hands. Crafting an object is part of my process, working each stitch to turn yarn into a piece, then seeing the piece made once again in two dimensions. My current work focuses on the physicality of absence. How do you paint someone who isn’t there? What is a ghost, really, but the shadow of someone you loved and lost. I explore these ghosts as the physical manifestations they have in my life - the void in a room, the shadows cast where I scattered a loved one’s ashes. My landscapes and tableaus are real, yet not. I allow my memories and my ghosts to warp them as I work.

Mariah Cameron Scee (b. 1983, Missoula, MT) has a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She had an eccentric upbringing, primarily in Maine, surrounded by books and rescued pets, regularly moving from one apartment to another. Scee has had an award-winning graphic design career, including 6 years as Creative Director at Second Street Brewery in Santa Fe. Her design work developed her interest in pattern and line work, expanded her command of color, and eventually led her back to painting full-time. She lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and maintains a part-time residence and art practice on Cameron Ranch in Martinsdale, MT.

2-D, Painting (all materials), Sculpture