Marie Fox

Marie Fox’s paintings have been represented by galleries across the country. Since her two-person show in Nantucket in 1987, she has shown work in Boston, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. She is currently represented by Helena Fox Fine Art Gallery in Charleston.

In 1986 The White House commissioned Marie Fox to paint “The Lighting of The National Christmas Tree”. That December she presented her painting to President and Mrs. Reagan during the televised Pageant of Peace Ceremony. The following year Mrs. Reagan invited her to decorate a wooden egg for display at the Annual Easter Egg Roll at The White House.

Her artwork has been displayed twice by Willard Scott on The Today Show and has been featured on the covers of “Country Living Magazine” and “USAir Magazine”. Marie has created commissioned paintings for The Maryland Arts Festival, The Boston Freedom Trail Foundation, and Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston and for private clients in South Carolina, New England and California.

Among the companies that have represented Marie’s artwork are Panasonic of Japan, Bigelow Tea Company, Country Curtains, The Washington Post and Plymouth Plantation. Since 1987 she has sold over 40,000 self-published prints and posters of her paintings.While Marie Fox hails from a family of architects, she always felt drawn to painting, and pursued an education that nurtured that interest into a passion. At Wellesley College she fell in love with early Renaissance art and spent a summer studying the frescoes and panel paintings of Florence. In 1967 she graduated with Distinction in Art History.

Russian icons became Marie’s passion in 1971. While working at The Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC she was invited to join an exhibit of Russian arts and crafts that was to tour the US for a year as part of a cultural exchange between the two countries. The exhibit included Peter The Great’s chalice, Ivan The Terrible’s saddle and a stunning collection of icons. Working with the tour’s master icon restorer, Marie learned to prepare and gild wood panels and to copy onto them the colorful and graceful images of Russian saints. Copying icons, she was told, gave one an intimate knowledge of the materials and methods used by ancient icon painters and was thus essential to the education of anyone wanting to restore icons. Naturally the idea of preserving an artistic legacy was very appealing.

In 1973 Marie was award a 3-year grant by The Ford Foundation and The National Endowment For The Arts to study Art Conservation. During her graduate studies in Ohio she cleaned, repaired and inpainted museum paintings and as part of the curriculum copied many of them, thus learning technique from the masters themselves.For the next decade she continued experimenting with her own painting while practicing museum art conservation in San Diego. Finally the call of creativity was too powerful to resist. It was time to make art rather than repair it. A gallery in Nantucket agrees.

COMMISSIONED PAINTINGS

The White House Christmas Tree, presented to President and Mrs.
Reagan during televised Lighting of The National Christmas Tree Ceremony, 1986
Easter Egg, by invitation of the Reagans, Marie painted a wooden egg displayed at The White House Easter Egg Roll, 1987
A Celebration of The Arts, featured artist for The Maryland Arts Festival, 1990
The Freedom Trail, The Boston Freedom Trail Foundation, 1995
The Frog Pond on The Boston Common, painting and limited edition print for
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, 1998
House Portraits for private clients from Massachusetts to California.

EDITORIAL

The Today Show, Duxbury print featured by Willard Scott, 1987
A Celebration of The Arts displayed by Scott, 1990
Country Living Magazine, Catching Fireflies on cover, 1990; featured inside, 1991
USAir Magazine, Historic Boston on cover, feature article inside with 10 images
Greater Boston Visitor’s and Convention Bureau, Historic Boston, cover, 1998 – Articles/photos in Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, local paper in Nantucket, Duxbury, Plymouth MA and Easton, MD

PUBLICATIONS

Panasonic of Japan, corporate calendar, 13 images, 1996
Also in Japan: Fresh Apple Pie, bakery poster; Historic Boston, jigsaw puzzle;
Wonderland calendar, 13 images
Bigelow Tea Company, Sweet Dreams, catalogue
Lang Graphics, notecards, 6 images
Country Curtains, 4 prints in catalogue