Dear Diary #4, 2025

Marianne Deruelle Zarembowitch  

After a fast-paced corporate career followed by a sudden rupture a few years ago, I undertook a journey of introspection to better understand my place in the world. From this inner exploration my art was born: each canvas becomes the vessel of a tumult of emotions, questions, and memories, all channeled through the pictorial gesture.

Deeply inspired by my travels across the world, I seek to capture in my paintings those suspended moments when horizon and light demand a pause. My works thus act as open windows toward a moment of distance and introspection, where the viewer can suspend time and confront themselves.

I call this approach inner ecology: returning to the essential, centering oneself, allowing what lies beneath to surface. In its original sense, ecology is “the science of the house." For me, that house is internal: it is about caring for it, creating balance, and cultivating presence within.

In the studio, this philosophy takes form through gesture. My creative process is deliberately slow and patient. Building my stretchers, preparing my canvases, working pigments with my hands—this first physical confrontation with matter marks the beginning of dialogue. Direct contact with the material removes any distance between emotion and surface. Through successive layers, each texture and shade absorbs the emotion I seek to transmit. It is an ecology of gesture and time, where slowness and closeness to matter reveal my sincerity and vulnerability.

This process gives birth to paintings that are not only meant to be seen, but to provoke a face-to-face encounter. They open a space for retreat, where the viewer may also practice their own inner ecology: to slow down, observe, and clarify what inhabits them