DORÉ

We first came across Marleigh’s beautiful paintings on Instagram and immediately started following her for daily color inspiration. When we dug a little further and found out she works and lives in Hollywood Dell in Los Angeles, we decided to send Erik over to scope out the studio (and woman!) behind some of our favorite color palates.

How would you describe your paintings in one sentence?

Romantic formations of memories and life through rich color and considered forms.

What does a typical day in your studio look like?

I keep a bullet journal to keep my daily to-dos checked and to prioritize projects. I’ll have meetings only a couple days a week since it can be draining to be turned on all the time. I’m very introverted and introspective so I treasure my silent time. I put on my noise-cancelling headphones and work on color palettes either online or with paint or Pantones. I’ll work on drawings on the computer or canvas sketches as well as presentations for clients. I like the tender process of presenting work to a client, the packaging of it all. I work on anything from illustration to site design to packaging to artist collaborations where I create work for clients whether murals, clothing or product artwork designs. Every day is different which I love and I love to be in charge of my work life. Somedays I really need to rest my brain, so I make sure to honor that energy restore when I need it. Sometimes the studio is a mess with paint and canvas everywhere which I love as well. Everything always feels so dynamic and alive in here. I’m an abstract-approach person, I like looseness and going with the flow within some structure so I can fully blossom in thinking and execution.

What do you look to for inspiration?

This depends on where I am with my creative process and what that relationship looks like at the time, it changes often. Sometimes I’m simply just driven to create by being inspired by a color or a form I see in my mind randomly. I distill things down in life to very digestible things because there is a lot of beauty in flatness, it feels infinite and you can really pay attention where there aren’t too many elements. You can sink in and feel it all fully. Other times when I feel in a rut, I look to the past and other artists I love, shapes in things I see like a lone hair on a bath wall or a puddle on a sidewalk, the way vegetables or fruit are peeled. I find inspiration in small moments that I like to freeze into memories through forms of painting and digital artwork.