Mando Marie

An American painter and Stencilist, Mando Marie (seeyouthroughit) has been living and painting in Colorado since 2001. She attended the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (RMCAD) and has exhibited extensively in the US and Europe. She creates small works on paper and larger works on canvas for indoor exhibition. She also paints large scale murals in outdoor and urban and garden settings. Her use of nostalgic storybook like imagery is an invitation for viewing allegorical and highly painterly compositions . Signature in her very graphic work is the use of children and young adults as imagery tools to deliver clever often subtle messages that can straddle a line between comforting and spooky. Other signature and recognizable traits in her work are the common use of ‘twin imagery’ and the consistent use of vintage sewing patterns as backgrounds to inform the compositions of her paintings. The work has a very wide appeal. Her respect from the Street Art world, and her appeal to a fine Art crowd is a rare combination. Along with Swoon and AIKO, Mando Marie is among the very best women working in the important genre of Stencilism, and her visual language is as rich and graphically powerful as any of her peers. With Mando, it is refreshing to see graphic stencils (cutout devices to reproduce and apply graphic imagery or text) which are not the overtly violent or super sexual images that might have originally attracted audiences to the genre. As stencil painting matures Mando Marie’s work is keeping pace with an evolving and discerning eye. Thematically, a regular comparison from the fine art world is Henry Darger, but Mando Marie is also heavily influenced by classic ‘golden book’ era illustrators like Eloise Wilken, Tibor Gergely and Leonard Weisgard. Mando's paintings use a combination of mediums and techniques In most works, some elements are screen printed, some are wheat pasted, and some elements are drawn out and then made into hand cut stencils and spray painted. There is also acrylic paint applied by brush and splatter techniques, and of course the trademark use of vintage sewing patterns is present in most of her paintings. The complex use of multiple techniques in each piece lends to the depth and subtlety of her work.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

Figurative art, as opposed to abstract art, retains features from the observable world in its representational depictions of subject matter. Most commonly, figurative paintings reference and explore the human body, but they can also include landscapes, architecture, plants and animals — all portrayed with realism.

While the oldest figurative art dates back tens of thousands of years to cave wall paintings, figurative works made from observation became especially prominent in the early Renaissance. Artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance masters created naturalistic representations of their subjects.

Pablo Picasso is lauded for laying the foundation for modern figurative art in the 1920s. Although abstracted, this work held a strong connection to representing people and other subjects. Other famous figurative artists include Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Figurative art in the 20th century would span such diverse genres as Expressionism, Pop art and Surrealism.

Today, a number of figural artists — such as Sedrick Huckaby, Daisy Patton and Eileen Cooper — are making art that uses the human body as its subject.

Because figurative art represents subjects from the real world, natural colors are common in these paintings. A piece of figurative art can be an exciting starting point for setting a tone and creating a color palette in a room.

Browse an extensive collection of figurative paintings on 1stDibs.