Marie DesMarais' work springs largely out of the unconscious sketches and scribbles in her countless notebooks. The almost whimsical forms and colors combine with found materials including paper, fabric, wood and glass to create landscapes that mimic both aerial views  and microscopic images. A focus on texture and depth gives her work a complexity that blends seamlessly into its thoughtful composition.

Marie's current series, "Circling Cartography," introduces linear form to her more prevalent organic shapes. Sticks of wood, square strips of plastic and angular paper cutouts move in and out of floral and cellular designs, mimicking the roads and manmade demarcations that crisscross the bits of map incorporated into the work. There is a refreshing playfulness to the series. The natural and unnatural, the organic and inorganic, harmonize in colorful interplay.

A graduate of Temple University's Tyler School of Art. Marie has been exhibiting throughout Philadelphia. By day, she teaches art at Doane Academy in New Jersey, and much of the rest of her time is spent hard at work in her home studio in East Kensington.