About me

I’m Marina Dowden, a Prague-based painter drawn to colour, atmosphere and that intriguing territory somewhere between what we see and what we feel. I work mainly in oils and acrylics, moving freely between landscape, abstraction and whatever happens when the two refuse to stay politely separate.

I came to painting by a rather indirect route — through music, linguistics and many years of teaching. Perhaps that is why I have little interest in following one prescribed artistic path. Painting is the place where I don’t have to explain, teach or get anything exactly right. I can experiment, exaggerate, simplify, disturb the obvious and occasionally let the sky become something it was never supposed to be.

My work is rooted in the visible world, but I rarely feel obliged to leave it as I found it. A landscape may become a memory, a cloud may acquire a personality, and colour is allowed to misbehave.

I paint what catches my eye, stays in my mind or refuses to leave me alone.

Preferably in unapologetic colour.

I view painting as the ultimate expression of freedom. Each brushstroke is a testament to my belief in the liberating power of art, capturing the essence of fleeting moments with a vivid, emotive palette. There are no walls, no boundaries in art. My fans say that I create from my heart. My passion towards artwork over the years has helped me to develop a style which is constantly changing and evolving.

Born in Baku to an Armenian family I'm fascinated by both the sea and the mountains. I draw inspiration from nature, travelling, music, books, films, memories and photography, from other artists and their artwork. The painting style that captivates me the most is impressionism that aims to depict the transience of light, and to capture scenes of life and the natural world in their ever-shifting conditions.

For me, painting is freedom with a brush in its hand. There are no rules I feel particularly obliged to obey, no boundaries that cannot be nudged a little, and certainly no reason for a painting to remain exactly where it started. My work keeps changing because I keep changing — and I would be rather worried if either of us stopped.

I was born in Baku to an Armenian family, which may explain why both the sea and the mountains have always felt strangely like home. Nature remains one of my greatest sources of inspiration, but I collect ideas rather indiscriminately: from travelling, music, books and films, from photographs and memories, from other artists, from a particular light on an ordinary afternoon, or from something glimpsed for a few seconds and remembered much longer.

Impressionism has always fascinated me, particularly its obsession with the fleeting light before it changes, colour before it disappears, a moment before it becomes a memory. But I’m less interested in belonging to a particular style than in seeing where a painting wants to go.

Sometimes it behaves. Sometimes it has better ideas.