Artist Statement
I center my work around the expression of human emotions. I open my soul to engage in a dialogue to explore the human experience from the inside out. My work reflects it. I showcase the rawness behind life. My devotion to figurative expressionism started at an early age. It shaped my sensitivity toward works of art that portrayed real-life experiences.
I aim to enter the observer's psyche through my artwork, engaging them in themes relevant to me. Protest injustices, present political commentary, and challenge their perception of beauty.
I aim to enter the observer's psyche through my artwork, engaging them in themes relevant to me. Protest injustices, present political commentary, and challenge their perception of beauty.
My Story
One of my fondest memories is of my mother painting; hair falling into her face, paintbrush in a loving grasp, robin egg blue smeared carelessly on her cheek. A beautiful cloudscape unfolding on her canvas, but my initial though was not that of praise, but of crisp cretic. “Mama, asi no es como se pintan las nubes.” Mom, that is not how you paint clouds. You could hear the chide in her voice when she clucked her discontent “Well if you think that you can do better, why don’t you give it a try?” I met her challenge headfirst and with enthusiasm. I must have been no more than five, barely old enough to count more than a dozen numbers, barely old enough to button my own shirt accurately.
This set me on the winding path of art, the untold adventures of painting. I used anything I could get my eager hands into, coloring on every surface, walls, and floors, and purses, leaving a vibrant path in my wake. You could say this left my dear mother more than a little frazzled, and myself in more than a heap of trouble. As time meandered into seamless days, my inclination for art became an insatiable thirst; a poor man’s desperation for water. My mother took me to my first art classes, beginning after school at Valle Abierto, in Santa Sofia Caracas. Time has a way erasing names and faces, but I will never forget my first instructors’ lessons, she was the one who helped me lay the groundwork to nourish my talent.
Later in age, with nearly another five years eclipsing (around 9-10 years old) I began coping the masters.
I started by coping Salvador Dali’s whimsical, striking, and often bizarre prints. I followed many masters’ lead, and even I began drawing my older brother’s music albums. ‘Pink Floyd’, ‘Yes’, and many others caught my eye, but also my heart. I was not content though, I knew I could create better work and was not creating anything that I was truly satisfied with, that is, until family steeped in with a helping hand.
My cousin Nelly Sanchez Arevalo, a painter at that time, began giving me more detailed instruction, guiding my creativity. Nelly and I create many drawings, the most memorable of which was a testament of praise and admiration to Pink Floyd’s album ‘The Wall’. White bricks depicted falling away reveal the havoc hidden behind, characters stepping through to reach out and touch you. Soon I was drawing and painting better, my improvement coming in strides. After endless recreations, I had come to grasp an understanding of the delicate but systematic process of drawing and paint.
As a teen, I could sense my love for art growing. I romanticized it like the famous playwrights of the renaissance. I knew I was going to be involve with art, in any of its’ forms, for the rest of my life; like the elderly feel rain in their bones. As a Caracas born, Jesus Soto, Cruz Diez and many other Venezuelan artist of my time heavily inspired me. I began experimenting, anything would do; paint and clay, cement and screws, nails, wire, and wood! The possibilities were limitless, boundless creativity poured through any median I could sink my teeth into. At 16 my friend Edgar Linares and I start our first venture in silk screening printing; another good creative young artist who influence my expanding mind.
At the completion of high school, I attempted to enroll into a collage specializing in art. During the era many parents did not approve of having a painter in the family. Bohemians were looked down on, the phrase even becoming a slur. It amazes me how times change, which is cliché to say, but I watch this new era embrace art full heartedly and wonder of all the possibilities. With ideas of my future grandeur thoroughly crushed, my second option was architecture, but the life of edgy punks groups and wicked rock-n-roll had led my grades astray; and so my sister convinced me to go to technical school instead. I was able to excel in advertising and mechanical drawings at Higuera Institute and then decided to continue my education further at Cedi-Art Institute.
Before I knew it, I was eighteen and out of my home, America calling for me in the distance. I left everything I knew, everyone I loved, all the things I was confident about, all back in my hometown of Caracas. During this period I kept painting with what I had learned those short years before and delved into Surrealism. I become a fan of Salvador Dali’s, hook line and sinker to say the least. A new chapter began, as I like to say, and Life’s’ journey unfurled before me. It was filled with success and failure, fraught with love and heartache, challenged by birth and death, stained by blood, sweat, and tears. I endured a continuous stream of experience that delivered me to the banks of a new aspect of myself; one I did not know could exist. I began to create less and less; paint less and less, and a feeling of incompleteness took root, something was missing. I found that life had endless little interruptions.
Not all of these experiences were bad. I began my own family, grew in stability, and learned to prioritize my needs with age. Now I being a new chapter again, a fresh page to create on. Under the guidance of Abdon J. Romero, Jesus Emmanuel Villarreal and Agustín Rolando Rojas I am Creating Art once again! I am currently focused in learning the academic teachings of Atelier setting. Hope you are prepared for what’s coming, and like what you see, because I sure look forward to it!
A biography of Roger Mari by proud daughter Chloe Mari
This set me on the winding path of art, the untold adventures of painting. I used anything I could get my eager hands into, coloring on every surface, walls, and floors, and purses, leaving a vibrant path in my wake. You could say this left my dear mother more than a little frazzled, and myself in more than a heap of trouble. As time meandered into seamless days, my inclination for art became an insatiable thirst; a poor man’s desperation for water. My mother took me to my first art classes, beginning after school at Valle Abierto, in Santa Sofia Caracas. Time has a way erasing names and faces, but I will never forget my first instructors’ lessons, she was the one who helped me lay the groundwork to nourish my talent.
Later in age, with nearly another five years eclipsing (around 9-10 years old) I began coping the masters.
I started by coping Salvador Dali’s whimsical, striking, and often bizarre prints. I followed many masters’ lead, and even I began drawing my older brother’s music albums. ‘Pink Floyd’, ‘Yes’, and many others caught my eye, but also my heart. I was not content though, I knew I could create better work and was not creating anything that I was truly satisfied with, that is, until family steeped in with a helping hand.
My cousin Nelly Sanchez Arevalo, a painter at that time, began giving me more detailed instruction, guiding my creativity. Nelly and I create many drawings, the most memorable of which was a testament of praise and admiration to Pink Floyd’s album ‘The Wall’. White bricks depicted falling away reveal the havoc hidden behind, characters stepping through to reach out and touch you. Soon I was drawing and painting better, my improvement coming in strides. After endless recreations, I had come to grasp an understanding of the delicate but systematic process of drawing and paint.
As a teen, I could sense my love for art growing. I romanticized it like the famous playwrights of the renaissance. I knew I was going to be involve with art, in any of its’ forms, for the rest of my life; like the elderly feel rain in their bones. As a Caracas born, Jesus Soto, Cruz Diez and many other Venezuelan artist of my time heavily inspired me. I began experimenting, anything would do; paint and clay, cement and screws, nails, wire, and wood! The possibilities were limitless, boundless creativity poured through any median I could sink my teeth into. At 16 my friend Edgar Linares and I start our first venture in silk screening printing; another good creative young artist who influence my expanding mind.
At the completion of high school, I attempted to enroll into a collage specializing in art. During the era many parents did not approve of having a painter in the family. Bohemians were looked down on, the phrase even becoming a slur. It amazes me how times change, which is cliché to say, but I watch this new era embrace art full heartedly and wonder of all the possibilities. With ideas of my future grandeur thoroughly crushed, my second option was architecture, but the life of edgy punks groups and wicked rock-n-roll had led my grades astray; and so my sister convinced me to go to technical school instead. I was able to excel in advertising and mechanical drawings at Higuera Institute and then decided to continue my education further at Cedi-Art Institute.
Before I knew it, I was eighteen and out of my home, America calling for me in the distance. I left everything I knew, everyone I loved, all the things I was confident about, all back in my hometown of Caracas. During this period I kept painting with what I had learned those short years before and delved into Surrealism. I become a fan of Salvador Dali’s, hook line and sinker to say the least. A new chapter began, as I like to say, and Life’s’ journey unfurled before me. It was filled with success and failure, fraught with love and heartache, challenged by birth and death, stained by blood, sweat, and tears. I endured a continuous stream of experience that delivered me to the banks of a new aspect of myself; one I did not know could exist. I began to create less and less; paint less and less, and a feeling of incompleteness took root, something was missing. I found that life had endless little interruptions.
Not all of these experiences were bad. I began my own family, grew in stability, and learned to prioritize my needs with age. Now I being a new chapter again, a fresh page to create on. Under the guidance of Abdon J. Romero, Jesus Emmanuel Villarreal and Agustín Rolando Rojas I am Creating Art once again! I am currently focused in learning the academic teachings of Atelier setting. Hope you are prepared for what’s coming, and like what you see, because I sure look forward to it!
A biography of Roger Mari by proud daughter Chloe Mari
From the Beginning
2023 Oli paint Portrait Miami International Fine Art Academy (MIFA) Workshop Miami Fl, with Maestro Elkin Cañas
2022 Drypoint Etching and Chine-Collé Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop New York City with Maestro Agustín Rolando Rojas.
2020-21 Weekly drawing schedule with live model at Miami International Fined Art Academy 'MIFA-Miami'
2019-2020 Drypoint Etching and Chine-Collé with Maestro Agustín Rolando Rojas.
2020 Portrait, and figure drawing 'Andrew Loomis Stile' with Maestro Abdon J. Romero. Internet/Video conferencing Class.
2019-2020 drawing biweekly schedule with live model at Alejandra Goldberg and Edin Gutierrez studio.
2019-2020 weekly drawing schedule with live model at Art Florida Academy, Sonia Hidalgo Studio.
2018-2020 Figure Painting and drawing with Maestro Jesus Emmanuel Villarreal, on an atelier School setting.
2019 May 24-26 Figure painting Workshop with Maestro Jesus Emmanuel Villarreal.
2019 Figure and portrait Drawing or painting with live model Art Florida Academy, open studio setting.
2017-18 Portrait Work with Maestro Abdon J Romero, on an atelier School setting.
89-2000 Move to Miami USA, experience working solo period.
86-88 Cedi-art, Venezuela
84-86 Higuera Institute, Venezuela Mechanical Design and Drawing
1979- 82 Privet Art classes by Professor Nelly Sanchez Arevalo
1974-78 Valle Abierto School (Art after school program) Venezuela
2022 Drypoint Etching and Chine-Collé Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop New York City with Maestro Agustín Rolando Rojas.
2020-21 Weekly drawing schedule with live model at Miami International Fined Art Academy 'MIFA-Miami'
2019-2020 Drypoint Etching and Chine-Collé with Maestro Agustín Rolando Rojas.
2020 Portrait, and figure drawing 'Andrew Loomis Stile' with Maestro Abdon J. Romero. Internet/Video conferencing Class.
2019-2020 drawing biweekly schedule with live model at Alejandra Goldberg and Edin Gutierrez studio.
2019-2020 weekly drawing schedule with live model at Art Florida Academy, Sonia Hidalgo Studio.
2018-2020 Figure Painting and drawing with Maestro Jesus Emmanuel Villarreal, on an atelier School setting.
2019 May 24-26 Figure painting Workshop with Maestro Jesus Emmanuel Villarreal.
2019 Figure and portrait Drawing or painting with live model Art Florida Academy, open studio setting.
2017-18 Portrait Work with Maestro Abdon J Romero, on an atelier School setting.
89-2000 Move to Miami USA, experience working solo period.
86-88 Cedi-art, Venezuela
84-86 Higuera Institute, Venezuela Mechanical Design and Drawing
1979- 82 Privet Art classes by Professor Nelly Sanchez Arevalo
1974-78 Valle Abierto School (Art after school program) Venezuela
Press Release, Interviews, Video, and Radio
Sep 6 2023
Press Releas Diario Las America (Miami)
Press Releas Diario Las America (Miami)
Aug 30 2023
Press Release El Nuevo Herald (Miami Herald)
Press Release El Nuevo Herald (Miami Herald)
Oct 14 2022
El magico Arte del Grabado (engraving/ print) en Doral Arts & Beyond.
Roger Mari y Helio Salcedo
El magico Arte del Grabado (engraving/ print) en Doral Arts & Beyond.
Roger Mari y Helio Salcedo
Aug 3, 2022
FlowLaZona Radio 'La Escafandra' Conversatorio de Arte Host: Mercedes Prieto
Roger Mari y Manu Medina.
FlowLaZona Radio 'La Escafandra' Conversatorio de Arte Host: Mercedes Prieto
Roger Mari y Manu Medina.
Feb 4, 2022
DORAL VOICE Community Radio 'Díasporaquí'' Viernes de Arte.
El Arte como todo! Roger y Chloe Marí.
DORAL VOICE Community Radio 'Díasporaquí'' Viernes de Arte.
El Arte como todo! Roger y Chloe Marí.
Sep 14, 2021
Adriana Leiva Martín 'Por Amor al Arte' Miami
Contar un Cuadro Nro 13 -Roger Mari
Contar un Cuadro Nro 13 -Roger Mari (English)
Adriana Leiva Martín 'Por Amor al Arte' Miami
Contar un Cuadro Nro 13 -Roger Mari
Contar un Cuadro Nro 13 -Roger Mari (English)
November 11, 2020
Pangea Radio 'La Escafandra' Conversatorio de Arte Host: Mercedes Prieto
Apia, Roger Mari y Pablo Azar
Pangea Radio 'La Escafandra' Conversatorio de Arte Host: Mercedes Prieto
Apia, Roger Mari y Pablo Azar
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Return Policy
We do not currently accept returns. If you are not satisfied with your purchase, we may negotiate on an exchange bases for an art piece of equal or lesser value. So long as the original purchased item is brought in for evaluation and is found in pristine condition. We do not process exchanges on commissioned artwork. |