Mara Szyp - Biography
Mara Szyp is an emerging Argentinean-Canadian artist. She travelled around Argentina, also through the United States of America, where she lived in Los Angeles, later to Spain, Barcelona and then in 2005 she made her home in beautiful Vancouver Island, BC.
She specializes in West Coast Landscapes/Seascapes and Contemporary Abstracts.
Mara is a double cancer survivor who loves working with oils and acrylics. In 2017 after her third cancer, she was given another chance to live, and she decided to dedicate herself wholeheartedly to her passion for arts full time.
Surrounded by the incredible beaches and foggy forests, her unique perspective on her
work tends to tilt towards romanticized reality, dreamlike images of real places that
invite you to travel without even moving. She approaches her works with the intention to elate each viewer to feel the sand and rocks under their feet, smell the salty ocean breeze, and hear the birds above, as the tips of trees dance in the wind and the water splashes the shores.
She puts all of herself in each art piece she births. She is a very intuitive artist, and her senses are always open to perceive the world around her and that’s something you can feel through her art.
Curriculum:
2023/2024 AGGV ART GALLERY GREATER VICTORIA WINTER SMALL WORKS + SALE
2023 FCA VICTORIA FORTUNE GALLERY FALL
2023 FCA VICTORIA FORTUNE GALLERY EXPRESSIONS
2023 SPAC FINE ARTS SHOW
2023 TD PAINT-IN MOSS ST.
2022 TD PAINT-IN MOSS ST.
2021 TD PAINT-IN ARTISTS GUIDE COVID
2022 SOOKE FINE ARTS SHOW
2022 FCA VANCOUVER, BC SPOTLIGHT 2022
2022 NOV. HONOURABLE MENTION BY GALLERY RING FOR “CHESTNUT” ARTWORK
2021 BRONZE AWARD CAMELBACK GALLERY FOR “KANANASKIS”
2021 HONOURABLE METION AWARD GALLERY RING FOR “JADE & GOLD” ABSTRACT SHOW
2021 HONOURABLE MENTION AWARD GALLERY RING FOR “BROKEN” ABSTRACT SHOW
2020 THE PREQUEL ISSUE #7 PUBLISHED “THE OBELISK”
2020 UNTIL - THE PREQUEL PUBLISHED “REFLECTION”
2019 INTERVIEWED BY HERE! MAGAZINE
OCTOBER HILL MAGAZINE New York PUBLISHED 5 TIMES (2019 TO 2023)
OVER 100 ART SHOWS SINCE 2018
9 MAGAZINE PUBLICATIONS
4 BOOKS ILLUSTRATED PUBLISHED
Artist Statement ~
Mara Szyp
In my life, I had to pack up and move and reinvent myself but there was always a voice in the back of my head that would whisper “keep seeking”. Then life changed right in front of my eyes, and that voice sang “You are home”.
I paint to free myself of the chains around me, my body, and my mind.
When I am birthing a new art piece, it expresses who I was while morphing into who I will become.
I create art because it gives me a purpose.
In my portraits I see through their eyes, in my nudes I feel through their skins, in my abstracts I scream and dance and grow as their limitless shapes move and unfold, just as my life as an artist, bright and constantly evolving.