Roz Marshall is best known for her vivid, colorful and highly decorative still life painting. For the past thirty years she has independently celebrated pictorial space in a way few contemporary artists explore. Her imagery is inventive and playful and at the same time, an honest synthesis of her life experiences. Roz Marshall is also a talented teacher who has shared her love of art with children and adults alike throughout her artistic career.
Rosalind Mary Marshall was born July 25, 1947 in Newport, Wales, in Great Britain. Her father was an officer in the Royal Air Force and frequently moved his young family as assignments determined. As a child Roz lived in England, Washington, DC, Bahrain, Arabia and finally in 1962, moved with her family to Vancouver, BC. The experience of moving homes, changing schools and spending two years in Bahrain have profoundly influenced both her life and art. As in early years, Roz now continues to travel regularly in search of new horizons and, the rich patterns of Arabia have become permanently etched in her aesthetic.
Roz has always loved to draw. While she had little training during her school years, it wasn't until she enrolled in the Vancouver School of Art that she began to seriously nurture her talents and learn about the world of art. She studied painting with Don Jarvis and Bruce Boyd, but credits Jack Shadbolt for always supporting and encouraging her independent approach to imagery. She graduated in 1970 with an honours diploma in painting and has worked as an artist and teacher since.
She has always felt the need to assert herself as a woman artist and her imagery reflects this quest. While strongly influenced by Renaissance and Baroque detail and decoration, she has looked to other women artists like Joyce Wieland for inspiration. Roz's quilt and tapestry-like compositions celebrate the traditional work of women and the subject matter reflects things she is close to; her garden, fruit, pets, and vases of roses. Her recent work is intentionally positive, spiritual and beautiful in nature. However, it is her very lively treatment of shapes, vibrant colour and a strong expressive line that have remained dominant forces in her work over the years.
For more than thirty years, Roz Marshall has worked prolifically, producing hundreds of paintings each year. Her work is found in a number of important private and public collections right across Canada including the Artists For Kids Gallery in North Vancouver. She presently shares her time living and working in Steveston, BC, and on the big island of Hawaii.
