Saturday gala opening at The Gallery features Darlene Marr

Darlene Marr, whose work will be featured this month at The Gallery, is an artist whose talent is obvious in every medium she uses.

Marr’s show, “Retrospect,” will include nearly 25 watercolor and acrylic pieces, as well as some sculpture, and viewers will be treated to one of the more diverse hangings that The Gallery has seen in a while.

About half of the work that visitors will see is abstract, a departure from representational art that allows viewers to interpret meaning for themselves through the shapes, forms, colors and textures used by the artist.

According to Marr, the abstract work is relatively new and sort of “crazy” to her, as her past work has always focused on precision, and she actually holds a drafting certificate from Abbeville Vocational Technical School.

It began when she paid attention to the palettes she used to mix the paints for her more detailed work and recognized that in and of themselves they offered her a basis for “looser” work. In her current show, viewers who pay attention may be able to match her abstract work with the more detailed paintings from which they were born.

Some of Marr’s paintings evoke the work of M.C. Escher, seeming to represent infinity in a two-dimensional plane, perhaps the best examples of which will be her “Abstract Hummingbirds” and “Abstract Bluejays.”

Viewers who prefer representational art, however, will not be disappointed, as the show will also include a variety of natural subjects, including 

Marr, who currently resides in Lafayette, was born in upstate New York and lived there until the age of 7, when her parents moved her family to Maryland. Later, after marrying and having children of her own, she settled in Virginia, where she began her art education with a degree the Norman Rockwell Correspondence School of Art and Design. 

In 1976, Marr moved to Louisiana and has been here ever since. She went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Marr’s work can be seen in murals throughout Acadiana, including at the ULL football stadium and inside the Bistro Cafeteria inside Lafayette General Medical Center.

Saturday night’s gala opening, hosted by the Crowley Art Association, will begin at 6 p.m. and will feature wine, cheese and a chance to meet and visit with the artist. It is free and open to the public.

The Gallery is located at 222 N. Parkerson Ave. in Crowley. For more information call 783-3747.