PAINTING IS MY PASSION

Painting is my ritualistic, intuitive dance.

The act of painting is: the rhythmic movement, bursts and splashes of color, the lyrical gesture, the process of selecting the colors that are intuitively selected through the phenomenon entitled synesthesia. I’m literally seeing colors when I hear music. I have experienced this all my life. At first unconsciously, then once becoming aware of this gift, I have been able to channel my synesthesia in all my painting creating contemplative frenzy through very colorful exuberant interpretations that become an energetic, fascinating, gestural dance of color, texture and movement.

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EXPLORE

As a visual artist for 50 years, Marcelle has resided in locales across the US, many of these settings and cultures have influenced her work. She is an advocate of the arts and has launched formal Art Councils at the county levels to promote working artist and secure artist-in-residences in public schools. Marcelle was a recipient of an artist-in-residence grant funded by the Georgia Art Council, Atlanta’s Bureau of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.

DISCOVER

Marcelle holds her M.F.A. in painting and drawing from the University of Maryland and her B.A. in painting and drawing from the American University in Washington, DC. She has also been teaching throughout her career and has taught art at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, University of Maryland, Baltimore School for the Arts, Western Carolina University, Gibbes Museum School in Charleston, SC. and various art centers and privately in her studio.

ENGAGE

Through 2014, she was active in the Women’s Caucus for Art particularly with the DC and Philadelphia chapters. Today, Marcelle resides in NC where she continues to create her artwork focusing on commissioned pieces. When she is not in the her home studio painting, you confined her painting to live music in musical jam sessions.

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Marcelle Harwell Pachnowski: Painting Inspired by Music

I look at a work such as M.H. Pachnowski’s Cadmium Caribbean Diptych (shown below) and see the wondrous color associated with the close to the surface emotions of female artists. And yet, I also see the bravura brushwork associated with masculine power.
Bob Duggan, Identity Theft: Seeing or Not Seeing Gender in Art