The title of the exhibition, Engrams, refers to “traces of history written on the brain” an apt description of Marseille’s deeply-layered and nuanced collection of works. Using the ancient medium of encaustic, a mixture of beeswax and colored pigment, Marseille is able to present layered dreamlike surfaces that meld together images both from her own history and from the history of ancient and far off places. The traces of imagery can be veiled beneath the wax, deep beneath the surface, or scratched in like archaeic drawings and clues. Marseille’s process mirrors history itself, with it’s symbols and stories being buried and unearthed. In the words of catalog essayist, James Linnehan: The wax provides a transitional, literal, effective, material representation of time and process-- the entire sequence of first existence, gradual loss, uncovering, recovering, burying-- and the potential to finally surface again, or remain just below, or return.

New to the artist’s oeuvre are her grid paintings, arrangements of square panels mounted together on a dark aluminum backing. The panels are like separate sections of time - visual impressions that suggest that any one interpretation is just a portion of the truth. Each square operates as a finished work while interacting with the whole as part of an even larger glimpse into a complex system in which possibilities are endless.

All of Marseille’s explorations are accompanied by her rich and unmistakably individual sense of color. Rich browns and turquoise, creamy pale yellows and greens and deep shadowy blues provide a rich visual language of their own. Because she constructs the paintings layer by layer, building and excavating, revealing and concealing, the colors permeate the atmosphere of the works and envelop the viewer. The effect is an orchestrated experience of memory, history and the creative process.