Artist

About Mary Rose Deraco

My Inspiration

Art gives me a place to wrestle with my inner demons. Most of the inspiration for my work comes from nature and personal transformation. My studio is in my open garage and sits on top of a hill overlooking the beautiful landscape of the Los Angeles basin. My work is colorful and painterly with a strong drawing element. Drawing has taught me how to see and observe everything in life through an observational and creative lens. Painting is an intuitive, physical and emmotional exercise for me. I am working really big now. So, I am throwing body into it, moving up on ladders, lifting the work onto the floor, pouring and moving paint on huge surfaces with big brushes and tools. I work on canvas, wood and paper using acrylic paint, collage, lots of charcoal and pastels. I always have music playing, it is the back beat behind many of my gestural lines and shapes.

I love to work on themes of inner struggle in a series. People really relate to transforming hardship into strength and I get as much out of watching people react positively to my work as I do in making it.

My work seems to evolve and tell a story of my chaotic and beautiful life in LA.

My most recent series, “The Truth is My Name” is a symbolic depiction of the unraveling of truth regarding the gender abuse and inequity that is the backbone of the #Metoo movement. The end game for this series is to ride on this invigorating wave of the consciousness of truth, heal the past through creative expression and share in the beauty of this collective transformation.

I have always been drawn to shapes of the floral figure as a symbol of the power of the feminine so I sought to find the one with the most significant meaning of feminine power, transformation and creativity. The Lily, in many cultures and religions symbolizes transformative and fertile powers that come from the creative expression of female emotion. In Geek mythology Hera , in a fit of rage, sprayed her milk into the heavens which created a rain of lilies onto the earth. The series started two years ago with personal commitment to daily journal writing along with repetitive observational drawing of the lily figure. I decided to start with charcoal to symbolize the expression of dark pent up emotions. The drawings eventually transormed into loose and explosive paintings that symbolize the unraveling of dark emotion into the beauty of transformation. While creating this intuitive painting series, I feel like I have become one with the lily, its powerful symbolism, its healing nature and its sensual lyrical lines. In borrowing the bold language of the lily flower, to express and transform a collective pain, I have shared in a renewed and empowered voice of a era.

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My Medium

I am an artist living in Los Angeles and painting my inner and outer worlds. Art is an intuitive, physical and emotional exercise for me. I am working on original art and big pieces. I am throwing my body into it, moving up on ladders, lifting the work onto the floor, poring and moving paint on huge surfaces with big brushes and tools. I work on canvas, wood and paper using acrylic paint, collage, charcoal and pastels. I specialize in contemporary art and abstract art.

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