Mariella Bisson Receives Pollock-Krasner Award

Based on her large-scale mixed media works on linen, West Branch Gallery artist Mariella Bisson has won a two-year fellowship in painting from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. This is the second Pollock-Krasner award for Bisson, who received her first award in 1990.

Established in 1985 by the Abstract Expressionist painter Lee Krasner, the widow of Jackson Pollock, the purpose of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation is to award “those individuals who have worked as professional artists over a significant period of time.” Applicants range in both the medium and material. Painters, sculptors, printmakers, and mixed media artists were among the 116 grant recipients who received a total of $2,163,000 in the fiscal year ending in June 2014.

Born in Northern Vermont and a resident of Woodstock, New York, Mariella Bisson joined West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Park in 2011 and had a solo show, “New Visions of Nature”, that same year. Her collage works, paintings, and drawings are instantly recognizable when observing the region’s forests, rock formations, and waters. Bisson’s signature style captures the tension of motion we see in nature: water, wind, a tree slowly falling. Standing directly in front of any one of Bisson’s paintings, the fractured shapes only begin to fall into place as you move further back, away from the work. Finally, the kaleidoscopic vision comes into focus, bringing nature indoors, and the majesty of our surroundings is right in front of you, hanging on a wall.