Marley Freeman (b. 1981 in Boston, MA, lives between New York City and Massachusetts) applies hand mixed gesso onto canvases of varying scale before putting down her first layers of color, steadily building a narrative of organically connected shapes and forms that are informed by the push and pull of dense and looser strokes of paint in contrasting, unique pigments. The free flowing abstract shapes in Freeman’s canvases often approach—but stop just short of—truly recognizable form. Her intimacy with the world of textiles inform the internal structure of her psychologically charged canvases, which can be seen to mine the delicate intricacies of warp and weft to achieve carefully balanced compositions that reward sustained looking.

Her work is included in numerous public collections, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; University of Colorado Art Museum, Boulder, CO; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.