SCARLETT RAVEN & MARC MAROT THE ARTISTS WHO ARE CHANGING THE WAY YOU VIEW ART
Scarlett Raven, 30, is a successful landscape painter, graduating from the prestigious Central St Martins School of Art in 2009, shortly before becoming one of the youngest artists ever to have had a solo exhibition in London’s esteemed Cork Street Galleries, aged 21. Her high profile collectors and supporters include Lord Jonathan Marland, Duffy, Take That, Roxy Music and Orlando Bloom. Working predominantly in oil, using her hands rather than a brush, to watch her paint is like watching a conductor: sweeping gestures, arms deep in the momentum of orchestrating paint and whatever else comes to hand. The sculptural nuances of her paintings nod towards Anselm Kiefer. The layers of medium float somewhere between impressionism and expressionism,
and Scarlett’s animated style of delivery and free-form manipulation of paint call to mind the canvas-hovering antics of Jackson Pollock. Marc Marot, 57, has been one of the most consistently successful executives in the UK music industry. He was appointed managing director of Blue Mountain Music (representing Bob Marley and U2 amongst others) aged 24. He became the president of The Island Universal group of record companies aged 29 and remained at the helm for 18 years working with many of the UK’s most successful recording artists including Pulp, The Cranberries, Elbow, P.J Harvey and super group U2.
Collaborating under the banner Maven Art, Scarlett Raven and Marc Marot are acknowledged to be the world’s first augmented reality fine artists, deconstructing the process of painting via the mediated realities of modern technology. Within their method, digital meets analogue and paint collaborates with pixels. Branding themselves ‘the Augmentists’, their work appears conventional on the surface utilising the medium of oil paint, however if you look beneath the surface you will find animated layers, stories, poetry, film and music; taking the viewer on a journey mapping the multiple stages through which a blank canvas becomes a repository for unfettered emotional impulses.
It’s a fascinating process that throws into sharp relief that great question of whether a work of art is ever truly finished. Their poignant undertaking pits the past against the present, reframing history and classic painting techniques through the increasingly magical lens of 21st century technology. They say a picture paints a thousand words, and yet under the surface of Scarlett & Marc’s augmented reality paintings are tens of thousands of other images, overlaid and layered with thought and inspiration.
A thousand words doesn’t begin to cover it.
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