Marie Pol

Marie Pol creates a bridge between cultures. She has studied extensively to perfect her skills and techniques in academic art at the prestigious Imperial Academy of Art in St Petersburg, Russia, while incorporating an eclectic mix of contemporary influences inspired by the Renaissance. Her work explodes with bold splashes of colour, creating a powerful presence that evokes a dialogue between two minds.

Pol previously worked at the highest levels of tax consulting, building a successful career within a highly structured and analytical profession. Yet, beneath this professional identity, her thoughts continually returned to the creative impulse that had always driven her. Ultimately, she chose to embrace the uncertainty of pursuing that inner inspiration, allowing the instinctive movement of the brush and the fluidity of oil paint to become a new language through which to express herself.

Her artistic practice has been shaped by a life lived across cultures. From the historic grandeur and 18th-century architecture of St Petersburg, Russia, where she worked as a guide introducing travellers to the city's cultural heritage, to periods spent in Luxembourg and Singapore, and now her new chapter in Sydney, Australia, Pol's experiences have cultivated a distinctly international perspective. Fluent in five languages, she draws upon this linguistic and cultural fluency to navigate different traditions and perspectives, incorporating an awareness of place, identity, and cultural memory into her work.

Pol often paints late into the night, when the world falls into a quieter rhythm. With Italian radio playing in the background, the studio becomes an intimate space in which her paintings seem to unfold through movement, colour, and gesture. The act of painting becomes almost choreographic - a private dialogue between artist, material, and canvas.

Under the Same Blue Sky

The Under the Same Blue Sky collection explores the simple yet profound universality of looking upwards and recognising a sky shared by all. Across a series of distinct settings, Pol invites the viewer to pause and rediscover a sense of optimism through the familiar expanse of blue above us.

There is an intentionally nostalgic quality to the collection: a return to moments of stillness, when one could simply lie within nature and surrender to its surrounding rhythms. Pol's impressionistic gestures move freely across the circular canvases, creating the sensation of looking through the human eye rather than observing a conventional framed scene. The round format reinforces this intimate perspective, drawing the viewer into an almost immersive field of colour and atmosphere.

In a contemporary world often defined by acceleration and uncertainty, Under the Same Blue Sky offers a quieter proposition: to look upwards, reconnect with the natural world, and recognise the possibility of optimism within the everyday.

Back to Antiquity

In her Back to Antiquity collection, Pol turns towards the enduring language of classical sculpture, drawing particular inspiration from Michelangelo's David. The collection considers the relationship between the permanence of the human form and the more elusive, intangible forces that surround it.

Michelangelo's David provides a structural and conceptual point of departure. The sculpture possesses a commanding physical presence, yet its meaning shifts according to the viewer's perspective. Pol responds to this idea by placing the classical figure within an abstract environment of layered forms, gestures, and ghost-like symbols that appear to move around the solidity of the sculptural body.

These ethereal elements invite questions rather than providing definitive answers. What might these forms represent? If the physical sculpture can be understood as a representation of the dominant, tangible self, perhaps the abstract textures surrounding it evoke the internal world: the emotions, memories, perceptions, and identities that exist beyond what can be physically seen.

The resulting tension between permanence and movement, structure and abstraction, creates a visual dialogue between the body and the mind. Antiquity becomes not simply a reference to the past, but a framework through which Pol examines contemporary questions of identity and perception.

The Mind's Eye

Across her practice, Pol has developed an approach grounded in the idea of the mind's eye—a universal means of experiencing the world through perception, memory, emotion, and imagination. Her paintings are characterised by an optimistic and romantic sensibility, expressed through saturated colour, tactile surfaces, and the expressive movement of the brush.

There is a deliberate departure from the commercial world that once defined her professional identity. Rather than presenting an image of achievement through conventional measures of success, Pol invites the viewer to experience something more instinctive: the freedom of becoming absorbed within a work and momentarily stepping outside the structures of everyday life.

Her paintings become spaces of escape, contemplation, and emotional reconnection. Through the flirtation of colour, the physicality of texture, and the rhythm of her brushwork, Pol invites us to see beyond the immediately visible, to enter the space between perception and feeling.

Ultimately, her work proposes that art can offer a return to something instinctive: the ability to look, to feel, and to become temporarily lost within the experience of seeing.

Marie Pol was interviewed February 2022
By Danny Booth

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The Russian Ark