ARTIST STATEMENT

Radiant Rupture presents a survey of paintings and drawings created over the past decade by California-based artist Marie Thibeault, whose work is deeply informed by specific landscapes of this region. Rooted in direct observation and lived experience, these works bear witness to environments shaped and increasingly destabilized by fire, flooding, erosion, and other forces accelerated by climate change.

At the center of Thibeault’s painting practice is an inquiry into landscapes impacted by climate-related trauma. Elements of infrastructure and architecture function as framing devices, set against the effects of active natural phenomena such as atmosphere, water, and fire. Within this dynamic interplay, the painted surface becomes a threshold for transformation, a site where the natural and built environments intersect, dissolve, and momentarily recohere. This threshold opens onto multiple spatial registers: traces of the past linger as palimpsest, the present occupies the surface with urgency, and the future hovers as unrealized potential.

Her compositions frequently feature an abstracted horizon line, evoking both the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and a sense of precarious balance. Layered within these structures is a visual lexicon drawn from cartographic references, geological diagrams, weather charts, and firsthand encounters with specific places. While the imagery often suggests moments of rupture, the works are unified by luminous, atmospheric fields of color that bring cohesion to the complexity. Through this process, painting becomes a metaphor for deep time, environmental precarity, and the challenge of containing the uncontainable.

Marie Thibeault is a widely exhibited artist with work in international private and public collections. She is represented by Ellio Fine Art in Houston and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Thibeault received her MFA from UC Berkeley and is Professor Emerita at California State University, Long Beach.