Tag: Watercolor
Fertility Adieu
When I receive this text: “Do you have a painting for a hysterectomy?”
“Why, of course I do.”
And then I said goodbye to this sweet painting this morning. SOLD. I love that she has a new home and love everything this painting gave me.
Fertility by Marika Reinke
This is a place of gratitude and unpeeling place of wonder.
You devotedly received her everything; visceral love, familial strength, earthly creation and boundless, mysterious motherhood. They seed securely in your cosmos; timeless and ancestral.
This place has done her selfless duty and given until she needed to no longer.
This is a place of love and a place of beauty. A place for pocket-shrines and vistas in her name.
13” x 10” Watercolor
The Next Party
My Jungle
My jungle is not green, Nor any quiet color. My jungle is not silent, Because she squeaks and yawns unlike an ordered universe. My jungle is not still, Its movement flows in winds and rivers. My jungle blooms, and swallows, sighs in heaves, it splatters and disconnects and re-puzzles. She does not know she is a mystery. She is my jungle.
Watercolor 12” x 16”
Marika Reinke 2016
$150
-SOLD
Currently installed at Sage Brush Art Studio, Brasilito Costa Rica
CONTACT ME
E-MAIL LIST
Join my E-mail List Here to get current news of events and special deals. I respect your privacy and will not share this information with others.
Like my Facebook Page
I offer special deals and offers to my Facebook fans. Come join us here Marika’s Art Studio
Jewels, Dreams and Metaphors
These are beautiful one-of-a-kind original watercolor painting necklaces. They sparkle, a luscious punch of style, like jewels but crafted with iridescent, gold, silver and vivid luxurious pigments. Practically, they are durably sealed to outlast Costa Rican heat and water (please don't put them in the laundry though!). Ultimately, they are meaningful gifts that seal friendship, memories, love and self.
On the Cover
It is official. Goodbye Adrian made the cover of the German magazine raum & zeit (Space & Time). The magazine runs in print and is available in Germany. I have a few copies in Seattle but none in Costa Rica. 
How did this happen?
I was discovered online. The magazine did a review of possible covers and Goodbye Adrian won the honor.
Yes, they contacted me for permission and paid me fairly for the use of my artwork. In a digital age, there are still organizations that respect copyright and the work of artists.
It goes without saying, but I’ll say it. I’m honored.
Despite being on a hiatus from almost everything in Costa Rica my art and Adrian can take on a life of their own.
This work is a story of miscarriage, a story of meaning-making from loss, a closing, as well as a story of hope and beauty in the tragic.
This story, not an easy one, is being honored and being seen. It gives me hope for my art, the world and women.
And I keep painting. 🙂
BUY HERE
Original Available: $500 + shipping
Prints available: $75
Email me for details.
CONTACT ME
E-MAIL LIST
Join my E-mail List Here to get current news of events and special deals. I respect your privacy and will not share this information with others.
Constraints and Freedom
SOLD “Let Go” (c) Marika Reinke 2015
SOLD “Subconcious Self” (c) Marika Reinke 2015
Freedom (c) Marika Reinke 2015
“I always finish a painting in a day – max 2 days” she said. And I thought Wow.
“I can work on a painting for up to 6 months.” was my response.
We both looked at each other in awe.
The creative process takes many forms and there is no one right way. But lately, I have been exploring my limits and then pushing them.
What if I’m abusing the seemingly Unlimited and Abundant? In this case – Time? So I experimented.
I sat down and painted these three 12″ x 16″ watercolors with these constraint; paint for 2 hours max and when the time is done, you are done, no fixing, no double backing, no thinking about it – You Are Done.
Here is what I learned:
Constraints paradoxically Facilitate Freedom. Without a time constraint, there was actually too much to consider and too much time to think about it. I moved forward from stroke to stroke without doubt because there was not time for doubt!
Constraints provide Focus. With a constraint, I knew I had to finish and with that tension came precision in my artistic decision making.
Constraints encourage Experimentation. Knowing I had to finish on time, made me more likely to try some things I wouldn’t have before and to follow my instincts as I painted.
Breaking Down Limits yields an Abundance of Creative Energy. Since trying this experiment, my work has exploded and creative blocks have disappeared. I’ve grown more appreciative of my technical capacity and believe in my ability to do this work. And I more implicitly trust my artistic instincts.
I’ve come to regard the practice of painting with constraints like writing freely in a journal. Set a timer, choose the colors and just paint, see what happens, follow your instincts, Let Go and the world opens up.
CONTACT ME
E-MAIL LIST
Join my E-mail List Here to get current news of events and special deals. I respect your privacy and will not share this information with others.
Like my Facebook Page
I offer special deals and offers to my Facebook fans. Come join us here Marika’s Art Studio
Loss
Loss is felt as much as for what we have as for what we think we could have had. A wound and scar, internally, spiritually, emotionally. We carry on, even thrive, but the wound reverberates.
Watercolor 19″ x 19″
Original is Sold.
This painting was a commission. My client wanted me to paint the feeling of loss that comes from a wound unreconciled. Both visceral and emotional. A tight twinning of psychology and body.
CONTACT ME
Join My E-Mail List
Are you looking for inspiration? A little down to earth reflection and renewal? Want to stay current on what’s new and what to expect from Marika? My emails are food for thought packaged with color, soul and humor.
Plus you will get access to exclusive content, sales and promotions.
Come join us here Marika’s Art Studio
The Paintings I Carry
One week left in Seattle and then we hop on the plane for a new adventure in Costa Rica. Mostly, packing has consisted of purging, the getting rid of and lightening, but I’m willing to carry a few items for sentimental reasons. I will paint in Costa Rica. I’m packing all my paints but I can’t realistically take all my paintings. I’ve settled on five and as usual they tell a collective story not only of my painting, but the reasons why we have made this decision to pick it all up and try something new for our family.
A Beautiful Mind (c) Marika Reinke 2015
Unusual Weather (c) Marika Reinke 2015 Watercolor
Life Begins at Sea (c) Marika Reinke 2015
Daire’s Dragon (c) Marika Reinke 2015 Watercolor
A Wedding Vow After 12 Years (c) Marika Reinke Sept 2014 Watercolor
I’ll start at the beginning.
It has now been 13 years married and a partnership 15 years old. But the sentiment of A Wedding Vow After 12 Years so perfectly describes the complexity of our marriage. And believe me, this big move, the huge purging of a very settled life, the intentionally unsettling and the transition time is creating a few more explosions, merging and reconstituting. We move in hopes of realizing some dreams but also in reconnecting over a slower paced life too. This big change is also a renewal of our vows and the painting is a worthy reminder.
Continuing with the theme of bringing our family closer together, Daire’s Very Not Perfect and Wonderfully Uncompromising Dragon is dedicated to my son and his initial rendering, but also an illustration of the stubborn insistence on believing in magic and that you can have just about everything, even if it contradicts itself. Because we believe this, we move to Costa Rica just to see what happens.
Life Begins at Sea is a painting based on my daughter’s drawing and commitment to our family. But this also illustrates our commitment to sustainability and the natural world, not to mention we will be living in an area saturated with many nesting sea turtles. The school the kids will be going to, La Paz Community School, is also committed to the legacy of sustainability and is a strong motivation for sending them there. This one must come.
Unusual Weather is one of my personal favorites. It is a story of climate change. As rapidly as the world is changing around us, I feel a deep need to go see it before it all slips away and reforms itself. This is why now is the time; not retirement, not when the kids are out of the house. Now. Those years in the future are filled with doubt and likely unlike anything it is now when these other milestones hit. I want my kids to have memories of the way the world is now, not an urban life or in the shadow of collective political panic of climate disruption. Now we go.
A Beautiful Mind is dedicated to my son again, who we recently found out is dyslexic (and as a result we found out my husband is too). This realization has reconnected me to my passion for education, specifically for dyslexics and educational justice. I have been fascinated by the study this summer and will spend the next couple years helping my son literally re-wire his brain to become as fluent a reader as he can be. It represents another renewed commitment to the best I can give my family, not to mention I think the painting rocks.
They are now rolled up and waiting for their next adventures, just like us.
There is so much about this whole being human thing that I can find wanting. My imagination paints the ideal picture and nothing will measure up. It is after all, my imagination. And my perfectionism. And my idealism. Which are flip sides of criticism. It is easy to criticize. And sometimes criticism is good. It can make us better.
I’ve finally got this watercolor paper prepped to my standards, (my perfectionism) for my next commission.
This next commission is not a perfect story. It is a completely wanting story and one that breaks my heart. Because we are human. Because we are mortal. Because in the end, we may not get everything we want out of this life. It doesn’t really all lay in our hands, there is fate and forces completely out of control. There is death.
And the most not perfect thing of all is love. There is Love. Love is not wanting. It just is. The act of appreciating Love in the face of nothing perfect is what this commission is about.
The trust placed in me in enormous.
It is teaching me to balance my perfectionism with pure and loving appreciation.
You must be logged in to post a comment.