Marie Larkin's unapologetic quirky girls

Inspired by fairytales and nursery rhymes Australian artist Marie Larkin creates dainty feminine art with a dark humorous twist. Richly colored and detailed like a lavish couture embroidery Marie’s oil and acrylic paintings weave quirky little narratives. Fragile, dollish heroines with fascinating eyes subtly wink at us as they get their sweet revenge.

Later Jack by Marie LarkinLater Jack by Marie Larkin

Nobody can describe her beautiful work better than the artist herself. The Rhyme and Reason series of drawings, paintings and sculpted art dolls play with familiar children stories, surprising the viewer with a different interpretation, in a black humor note.

"The girls have an otherworldly whimsy about them that takes a little away from their sugary cuteness." Their appearance evolved from sad and introspective to a more forceful mood: “cheeky, vengeful, downright cruel or somewhat trippy”.

Marie Larkin is a visual artist and art teacher since 1980. She achieved national recognition and success in the 1990s as an embroiderer winning important awards, grants and media coverage. Nowadays she works in a loft studio near Tamworth, NSW, creating beautiful paintings, drawings, sculptures and mixed-media art pieces.

Image gallery:
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Nom Kinnear-King is a young British painter focused on female imagery, as projections of her passion for literature, travelling, folklore....read more

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A happy woman carrying a devilish pan full of skulls, a little boy fishing a woman's corps out of the water, a girl analyzing a dead human fetus and many other...read more

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I simply love the world that Seth Armstrong depicts through his paintings. He mixes realism with a touch of fictional; he knows how to be...read more

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Gage Opdenbrouw aims at painting "the exterior world in such a way as to evoke the mysterious richness & vastness of the interior world...read more

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Kelly Vivanco admits she enjoys painting without planning, just letting her imagination run free and see where it takes her. To people who ask...read more