Marla Brenner prefers to paint from life whenever possible. “It provides an opportunity to tell a ‘light story’, to capture a range of moments that comprise the mystical wildness that we often intuitively feel when traveling a country road or trail, but is difficult to verbalize, to capture in photographs.

She carries her equipment with her into the field: a French easel that holds oil paints and brushes, a backpack for sketch books, thinner, paper towels, plastic bags, bug dope and sunscreen. There she paints on Belgium fine wove linen canvas mounted on museum quality gator board, or prepared museum board. Both surfaces are very smooth and make it easy to move paint around.

“I begin with a quick value drawing to capture the intrinsic design of the landscape. I’m looking for the rhythm in the contours, colors, and textures, dissecting the landscape and creating the painting in my mind. Then I spend the next two or three hours painting in the field, watching light change, referring to memory and my value drawing. On cold winter days, I paint more quickly because fingers freeze and paint turns the consistency of toothpaste.”

With each attempted painting, Brenner hopes to capture on canvas an image that speaks to the viewer with a voice that says, “I’ve been there, felt that—moments redolent with the scents, sounds, and atmosphere of some special time, place, and memory.” Moments, perhaps, like those described by Aldo Leopold, recalling pastures created when ribbons of Eleocharis green sandbars in an August river, or a snow cloaked January landscape when tracks of meadow mice, rabbit, squirrel and skunk mark their passing. “Sometimes,” she laughs, “I get it right.”

A graduate in art education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Brenner teaches at Madison Area Technical College. She has studied extensively with Ned Jacob who paints from life and who she credits with greatly influencing her painting style and artistic personality. She has also had the good fortune to paint with, and learn from Carolyn Anderson, Mark Daily, Kim English, Douglas Smith, Tim Lawson, Wolf Kahn, Ramon Kelley and Guy Coheleach. Her persona has been influenced by her travels to the Southwest to which she returns often to paint with friends. She has sketched, painted and photographed in Yugoslavia, Kenya, Tanzania and Canada, as well as throughout the United States.

During a first visit to New Mexico, she spent several hours with Georgia O’Keeffe at her home in Abiquiu.“That was a defining moment,” she recalls. “After returning from New Mexico, I became involved in commercial art—designing advertising, publications and collateral material. But my conversation with O’Keeffe kept haunting me. It helped me to believe that if I kept at painting, I’d someday find a way of painting that interpreted life in the way that I see it.”

When explaining her life philosophy, which is reflected in her work, she quotes the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “If we practice walking mindfully, being in touch with the earth, the air, the trees, and ourselves, we can heal ourselves, and our entire society will also be healed.”

Her work has been featured in “American Artist Magazine.” Marla’s paintings are on exhibit at Milward Farrell Fine Art Gallery in Madison Wisconsin, Tammarak Galleries in Stillwater Minnesota, and appear in collections throughout the United States.