Mando Marie uses stencil, traditional painting, and mixed-media collage to create works that tether the viewer to a feeling of haunting nostalgia. Walking the line between comforting and spooky, innocence and adulthood, life and spirit, her works find a real power in opposites. Her use of twin and mirrored imagery is a hallmark of her work. The immediate impact of her paintings is smartly tempered with profound universal themes like beauty, struggle, adoration, introspection and animalistic tendencies. Her work ranges in scale from intimate gallery paintings, to huge public wall murals. Mando’s intensely recognizable visual language and her use of stencils to support a highly painterly craft easily separate her in the crowded landscape of contemporary painters.
As explained by Jill Hartz, the Executive Director Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Oregon, “Mando is a true original. Her ever-present subject matter – animals, children, and everyday objects – walks a fine line between 1950’s nostalgia and unnerving narratives that call into question our own memories and interpretations of childhood. She does this with a beautiful blend of humor and pathos.”