Marion Wilson is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersections of ecology, identity, memory, and place. Through painting, photography, installation, and social practice, she investigates the relationships between people and the environments they inhabit, creating work that is both deeply personal and broadly connected to contemporary social and ecological concerns. After more than two decades developing socially engaged public art projects that linked communities through collaboration, Wilson returned in 2016 to her first artistic language: painting. Her recent paintings and experimental watercolors examine the fundamental elements of the medium—light, color, transparency, and surface. Working on materials ranging from translucent mylar and black watercolor paper to photographs and heavyweight cardstock, Wilson creates portraits that balance vulnerability, humor, and intimacy. Themes of aging, femininity, family, and everyday experience run throughout the work, while recent series have expanded beyond her immediate surroundings to explore complex female characters from film and popular culture.Wilson's broader artistic practice is rooted in a lifelong interest in ecology and landscape. Whether collecting moss specimens, documenting plant life, or creating large-scale public projects, she seeks to foster a closer connection between individuals and the natural world. Her work often considers how people shape, inhabit, and care for their environments, particularly at a moment when climate change continues to transform communities and ecosystems. Collaboration has long been central to Wilson's approach. Throughout her career she has partnered with botanists, architects, educators, and neighborhood organizations to reimagine public spaces through art. As a professor and founder of numerous community-based initiatives, she developed projects that transformed overlooked urban environments through creative engagement, recycling, and collective participation. These experiences continue to inform her studio practice, reinforcing a belief that art can serve as both a tool for observation and a catalyst for connection. Wilson holds degrees from Wesleyan University, Columbia University, and the University of Cincinnati. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including presentations in New York City, Miami, New Orleans, Buffalo, and Cleveland, and she has participated in numerous artist residencies across the country. Raised in Manhattan and now living and working between New York City and New Jersey, Wilson draws inspiration from a life shaped by activism, community engagement, family, and an enduring curiosity about the ways people connect to one another and to the landscapes around them. Artist's Notes on These Works The moss paintings are based on a herbarium collection I created while studying botany at Syracuse University alongside Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass.The Phragmites paintings depict an invasive species that has spread throughout the coastline of Martha's Vineyard, where I maintain a floating studio. Their rapid growth serves as a visible indicator of excess nitrogen in the ecosystem, a consequence of increasing tourism and development on the island.