We connect abundantly with people near and far by way of our cell phones. Born out of a desire to create portraits of the important people in her life — and without easy access to them — Peggy Marsh turned to the bank of photos on her phone. She soon found that studying and drawing a face in a photo opened a door to connection, and she began a prolific practice.

Her desire to paint portraits of family members expanded to include people she knows peripherally, and with her upcoming show at Front Gallery she began to focus on those she knows through her son Aaron Parazette. Over the years Marsh has visited Houston often and has come to know its art community well. Through her daily routine of receiving and perusing photos from Parazette and others, Marsh gives us a pageant of personalities and exposes us to the power of the drawn and painted image. 

Photographic images have been with us for nearly 200 years. Today the number of images we share is immeasurable. Photo portraits as they appear on digital devices rarely illicit a lasting response. But when they are translated by the hand through the act of seeing, drawing, and painting, the most ordinary photo can be transformed completely. The 100 portraits by Peggy Marsh are a testament to this truth.

Marsh has been painting and drawing since she was a small child. She earned a BFA in Painting at the University of California, Berkeley in 1958, and an MA in Painting at California State, Long Beach in 1968.

In an earlier project reminiscent of her show at Front Gallery, Marsh kept gallery hours during which she made drawings of visitors as they arrived and volunteered to sit for portraits. The project was an empathetic process of conversation and understanding through drawing. Each piece was added to the exhibition wall as an assertion of our human connection.