About the Artist- Marquita Willis
Meet Marquita Willis, an artist of Bluffton, South Carolina!
Originally from Los Angeles, California, Marquita Willis moved to Bluffton, South Carolina. She earned her Bachelor's degree of Fine Arts from California State University, Los Angeles. Since moving to Bluffton, Marquita has found herself inspired by the east coast. She sees the culture and story behind the area, and she couldn’t help but creating art that signifies the beauty she sees here. The vibrancy, shapes, and colors of her artwork has without a doubt originated from South Carolina’s rich history, and she has yet to stop creating from the scenery and culture she is surrounded by.
Marquita is a fan of Picasso, and often takes her own interpretation and inspiration from things he had once said. Picasso said, “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” And Marquita explains that she took that to heart in creating the diary of her life. She lives in art and what words cannot express, she uses painting as a way to tell them. She views painting as a way of communication, and color as way to express emotion. Like many artists, Marquita takes solace in that, if words fail, art thrives.
She believes in painting as her diary, but shows through her work that her life’s diary is only filled with beauty, love, and happiness. She states that she believes art is a window into viewing how the world works, or should work. This is explains why her pieces are chaos and hurt free, but rather filled with vibrancy and serenity at the same time. She creates work that not only appeases the eye, but arouses the senses, inviting viewers to read further between the marks of color and almost lose themselves in the depth of her pieces.
Marquita calls her paintings her photographs. In photographs you can capture one beautiful moment in time, and while the feelings of love are present in it, her paintings allow her to introduce new emotions and feelings into the scene. She takes moments and morphs them into marks of color, imaginative poses, and scenes that are otherwise only landscapes. Her portraits possess a feeling of otherworldly, almost celestial emotions that photographs have a hard time capturing.
Her style very much takes inspiration from Picasso in that of his painterly style, and surrealistic nature. It isn’t copied straight from life, nor was it meant to be. Marquita wants to show what lives in her head, rather what lives in front of her eyes. Each of her paintings teaches her something new about “philosophy.” She gains something new from each piece, and relishes in the completion of one more painting, filled with love, beauty, and a sense of serenity.
Marquita has had many paintings hung in art galleries in the south and on the east coast in places like Charlotte, NC, Hampton and Harrisonburg, VA, and Hilton Head Island, St. Helen’s Island, and Beaufort, all of which reside in South Carolina. Though she didn’t originate from South Carolina, she has undoubtedly proved her love for the area, culture, and stories that live here.
Marquita is a skilled painter and brilliant artist, and we’re grateful to be able to carry prints of her work at the Binya store!
