IMarilyn Belschner (1930-2018)   A few of Marilyn’s Memoirs’:

“I’d like to leave some sort of legacy.  I leave my work.  It is me.  It is what I do.”

“Placing my thoughts in written form is a big challenge.  But after a life spent make visual images it is time to reflect.” 

“Without a deadline--  with no thought of selling the work--  I lived a double life.  As a wife, a mother, working in a family business, employed 6 years as a decorator, supporting myself in a library, “retired” in Taos, NM  During all my life I found time to draw and paint”

“I never considered myself a professional.  I was a true amateur.  I painted for love.”

“Art, after all, creates what is most profoundly interesting about man’s brief sojourn in his lonely world.”  James Lord.

Robert Henri said:  “There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual.  It was the hope of recalling them that the arts were invented.”

“You are the sum of your choices……Did Grandmother Day study Camus in college?…..she often said this!”

“I paint a wide range of subjects because I’m interested in many things.  The human face and figure have always been favorite subjects.  I’ve painted for myself, for my own pleasure and not with the goal of a professional future.”

“Pastel went straight to my heart when I saw Chardin’s portrait of his wife in the Chicago Art Institute.  Using it, I found it like the dust on a butterflies wings.  I always like to draw and pastel is based on drawing.  I like to use my hands to apply this medium, not brushes”

“Very often I use photographs as reference and interpret them in my own way.  Since I barely do landscapes I seldom pain in plein air.  I don’t like to work in sun – wind – bugs with curious people around.  To me, painting is a very private matter.  Art and the artist are a love affair.  “How long did it take?” is a rude question.  Who thinks of time when making love!”

“I'm very fortunate that I've never counted on art work for income. I paint for myself - not the public. I'm approaching the age where need to account for my presence here.”

“You never achieve what you want, but you keep working and it's the search that is important. "I want the viewer to experience the impermanence of beauty--a moment in time that will not last, one that is sacred and representative of life and death."

“Life can be as complex or simple as we decide to make it. I made the decision a long time ago to choose a simple life. I'm happy at home with my cat and books and pastels, and there are many days when I don't even leave the house.”

“Willa Cather understood art. She said, "What was any art but a mold in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself-- life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.”

"Art, to be sure, is made of Love and Dedication to Death." James Lord - A gift from Admiration pp85

“It's the loneliness of what we've chosen that cuts into the joy. It's one thing for a child to paint pretty pictures. It's quite another for a grown woman to take such amusement seriously.”

“There is an emptiness which we continually seek to fill so that we will not remain alone.”

“Satisfaction comes not from the painting but from the process. The challenge is in the many decisions made in working.”

Henri—“The object of making a picture is not to make a picture. A picture is not to make a picture. The picture is a by product-- a sign of what has passed. A more than ordinary moment of existence.”

"Things I've seen and know" Goethe said  “Thinking is more interesting than knowing---- But not so interesting is looking”.

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life”. Picasso

"How can anyone enter into my dreams, my instincts, my desires, my thoughts, which have taken a long time to mature and to come out into the daylight, and above all grasps from them what I have been about -- perhaps against my own will?" Picasso

Registered in the Archives of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

Biography and works included in askART.com  

Marilyn died on December 23, 2018 at the age of 88.  She continued to paint during the last year of her life.  Her life’s works are now her daughters’, Shawn, with sole rights to publish and market.

Marilyn established an art purchase endowment at the Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) in 1996.  The Marilyn F. Belschner Arts Endowment Fund has and will continue to perpetuate her legacy.  

A sampling of Marilyn’s work can be viewed on her website, marilynpastelartist.com, or by contacting Shawn via   marilynpastelartist@gmail.com  ;  Shawn Cogdill, 583 Bordeaux Road,  Chadron, NE  69337.

Or, you are invited to call her direct at 308-430-1539.