The féminine way of sculpting with Marika
By: Kettly P. Mars

(en Francais)

The six years of Marika's evolution in the art of sculpture has not only been a period of learning and perfecting, but also and above all, a period where she ventured to the depths of her own femininity. To reach this place in her art, with trembling and palpitations, Marika explored without fear and unblushingly the most intimate aspects of her being. And in this way, she discovered a formidable enrichment of herself, and imprinted her creativity with a dimension and a transcendence that shouts out from the first glance of her art.

Marika is first and foremost a woman and a mother. Her personal quest carried her to the understanding that femininity is not a question of fashion, of environment, of race, nor of social needs. Femininity, for her, is an essential quality of the soul, an original and powerful spiritual expression. To be a woman is to penetrate the secrets of light, to touch the generosity of water, to understand the offering of sap to the deepest of roots. To be woman is to become the inheritor of fertility, of courage, of sharing, of tolerance that nature has imprinted in the body of a creature by calling it: woman.

Here is why Marika's sculptures impregnate her soul, her flesh, and her blood, transmitting her emotions and letting her filter her origins, and her instincts with such intensity. In favoring pure lines, bare and harmonious, her elongated style translates the spirit of the creation towards the Creator.

The art of Marika is not only a beautiful esthetic exercise but the celebration of life. The theme of maternity is particularly cherished. The woman gives life, she accepts to open herself and to suffer for writing a page of humanity. When under the hands of Marika, the love of a mother for her infant takes form, she arrives at transmitting to the materials the fundamental mystiques of this marvelous relationship made of tenderness, sacrifice, serenity, complicity and happiness.

When one asks Marika what gives her the most sense to her life, she responds: my femininity living in my sculptures.

September 14, 2003