Marion Ranyak – Family History
Marion was born in New York City in 1925 and grew up on Riverside Drive in the Bronx. Her father, William A. Hannig, was a public school principal and later a member of the public education Board of Examiners in New York City. Marion’s mother, Carolyn Exner Hannig, operated Exner Sand and Gravel, a successful family-company which supplied building materials up and down the east coast. Marion was always close to her older sister, Elenore, and her younger brother, Bill. She loved tennis, which she played often with her brother and continued playing until she was in her 80’s. Growing up, Marion was also an avid baseball fan and could be found at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx on ladies’ days.
Hans Hofmann Art School – The Awakening. 1946-1955
After graduating from Wheeler College in 1946, Marion spent 6 weeks at Hans Hofmann’s artist summer school in Provincetown, MA, which she described as “confusing.” It was completely different from anything she had ever been taught before about art. That year, she immersed herself in learning this new aesthetic of positive and negative space and returned to Provincetown for the full summery in 1947.
Marion’s reflections on the Hofmann school: “I have a very strong feeling about the two-dimensionality of the surface, and that is really the thing that I brought from that time… I don’t know what it is that makes me able to paint the way I paint. There’s something mysterious about it. It certainly bypasses the intellect. What can I say? It’s always there, it’s always available, and I always refer to it in myself.”
Her work in this period was a blend of realism and abstract, as she developed her style from the training. There were many charcoal drawings and oil paintings from this time which are now unknown, but MR-001 was preserved from 1948, and there are several paintings in the period up through the early 50’s. The paintings of the town and trees transition from realism into abstract.
Marion married John Ranyak in 1950, and they lived in Cambridge, MA, while he finished at MIT. Afterwards, they moved to Pennsylvania, where they started a family. “I was not involved with the art world,” Marion explained. “I cut myself off from it. I couldn’t paint, and it was too painful not to work. I was busy with the kids and a very devoted mother, doing all kinds of things with them.” She and John with their three children settled in Rye, NY, just outside New York City, to be close to her sister and parents.
Early Abstract – Developing Vision 1963-1973
After her youngest child started pre-school in 1963, Marion was determined to return to her pursuit of painting. “I used to go down to New York every month and go to all the galleries, study the work, and try to understand the concepts,” Marion explained. “I had no frame of reference after I started to work again. It was all an experiment.”
Her work started as abstract expressionist and shifted through different styles, including mixed media with sand and rope, and collages with cutout pieces. By 1968, Marion began painting more geometric shapes with hard edges. She entered juried shows and received some awards for her early work, but she felt disconnected from other artists, not having any connections in Westchester. “I’ve always been very independent,” she explained, but she did eventually find others like her.
In 1973 Marion and a friend artist started a Woman Artists Consciousness-Raising Group, where a small group meet weekly for over a year, painters, sculptors, film-makers. “The first day we met, they all cried,” she recalled. “It was just a great experience having that group.”
New York Art – SoHo 20 1973-1988
Also in 1973, Marion was invited to join the second women’s cooperative gallery in New York, SoHo 20. Each woman artist was featured in an individual show every two years, along with other group displays. One of Marion’s shows was reviewed by Michael Brenson, a notable art critic with the New York Times, which lead to her first round of professional success. She was published in American Artist magazine, and had works hanging in galleries around New York, California, and even Japan.
Marion continued as a full member of SoHo 20 until 1988 when she reduced her status to associate member. She explained, “I had a dream one night that a lion was chasing me. I later realized it was the stress of producing twelve pieces of work for my solo show in 24 months.” She decided to change her pace and allow for new directions.
Exploration in the 70’s
Starting in 1971, Marion developed a technique for sandcastings, which she produced through 1976. These were wall sculptures created by pouring cement into formed wet sand, resulting in a three-dimensional piece. Some were rectangular, others free-form. She carefully designed the work in reverse in the wet sand, mostly by hand, and spooned in the cement-vinyl mixture. Wire hanging loops were inserted after pouring. Her early pieces were plaster of Paris, but these did not last well.
Marion was always fascinated with the imagery in nature, but in her early years, she was frustrated with her attempts to capture this on canvas. In 1973, she found photography as her way to capture her inspirations from nature. She purchased a Mamiya 6x6cm camera and enrolled in a workshop with Wes Disney. “I thought painting and photography were more similar than they are,” Marion recalled. “And so it was a surprise and shock to discover how complex an art photography was.” It took her many weeks before any of her prints brought her the satisfaction of a working aesthetic. “It was so elusive. There is an emotional click I get from a photograph that works.”
Unfortunately, the whereabouts of her photographs and negatives are unknown, but she did also create photograms using her darkroom equipment and a variety of household objects. These were preserved from that period.
Marion credits both her love of nature and her photography work that led to experiments with nature subjects. In 1975 when painting abstract geometrics had begun to “feel empty,” Marion found inspiration in the abstract shapes of stone walls around Rye. She painted a series of stone walls which were included in one of her SoHo 20 shows. Marion then began to paint what she called “still lifes on the ground.” She used a cardboard frame with a string grid to sketch her composition on the canvas, then followed with acrylic paint.
Landscapes – 1978 – 2007
Marion’s home in Rye had a floor-to-ceiling glass wall facing the woods, which was lined with all kinds of house plants. In 1978, she began painting these plants overlaying the contrasting nature scenes outside creating a somewhat abstract composition. In 1980, Marion had inserted landscapes from the Southwest behind her house plant foregrounds, and she was moved by a comment, “I wish I could see the scenery behind those house plants.”
That was the inspiration that she needed; from 1981 until she retired around 2007, Marion painted landscapes based on photographs she took during travels. She labored over the details in these paintings for two to three months, carefully painting the details but taking liberty with element placements to “make the painting work aesthetically.”
It was also during her air-travels that Marion found the high-altitude views of agriculture and cities inspirational for composition. In many ways these were akin to the abstract geometric shapes and themes which she had developed in the late 1960’s and early 70’s. Marion took photos out the airplane window when she saw something she liked, and these later emerged as “Flight View” paintings, a total of ten works over a decade or more.
The Joy of Art – Post SoHo – 1995 and beyond
Marion continued as an Associate Member of SoHo 20, participating in group shows until 1995. She had grown tired of the marketing emphasis of the New York art world and wanted to paint for her own satisfaction at her own pace. She participated in juried and other shows in Westchester and Connecticut and relied on commercial galleries and agents to sell her work.
Without the pressure to produce and show, Marion explored other mediums and styles. She experimented in etchings and monoprints. The monoprint experience she described as “fast and free expressions,” and loved the spontaneity of the medium.
In 1997, Marion painted a series of 13-inch square paintings with abstract, symmetrical circles and bright colors. She enjoyed how different they were from her other work at the time, “usually my paintings are subdued nature colors.” After thirteen of these, she just stopped. “I had to go back to landscapes, and they were important for me to do.”
Sound Shore Gallery had become Marion’s primary selling gallery, from which she sold works to individual collectors, along with Pepsico, Chase, Pfizer, and other corporate collections. Two of her paintings were hanging in the World Trade Center on 9/11. After the recession of 2008, art sales were severely impacted, and Marion chose to retire from her work and actively showing or selling art. She continued to work with a few private agents for a several more years.