“Since I was a child, I was always drawn to painting and making things because of the intensity I would feel once I got into the work. I would become so focused that I would lose track of everything around me and become enthralled in the process of creating. It would be difficult for me to know when to stop because I would be riding out feelings of elation and when I would finally look up and become aware of my surroundings, I would feel cathartic. I don’t always become sucked into a meditative state through the act of making but that is the true intent of my art making. The process begins with searching. I try to rid my mind of expectations or specific intents, because often this will prevent me from getting involved in the work itself. I develop the composition, letting the relationship of shape, size, and color be informed by the development of itself. When I feel the different components are in congruence, then I feel lighthearted and overwhelmed with the process and it sings. I continuously modify, add, and cover up the surface creating a variation of layers as I search for a harmony amongst the different components within the composition. Covering up, losing and finding, I try to discover a rhythmic sense to the piece.
At the age of four I began to play the violin and played every day for an hour up until the age of fourteen. This being such an important part of my childhood development I feel that it has inevitably seeped into my visual sensibilities. Music has always had a great impact on me, I love to dance and sing, listen to music and I am enamored by art that I feel expresses a rhythm compositionally. Dancing became a weekly ritual in my life; I wanted to incorporate the vitality in the physical movement of dance in my art. The spontaneous and physical; a large sweep of movement created by my arm. Physically, I sometimes get into small drawings, but this speaks of the more intimate secret movements of my body. Working small feels more introvertedunlike my larger pieces that are more action orientedthe smaller pieces become more personally charged with my internal narratives and quandaries.”
Ariane, 2004
Natalia Ariane Hafizi-Marianovich was born on July 9, 1981 in Boulder, Colorado and passed away from breast cancer in 2015. She was the only child of Bahman Hafizi and Carmen Marianovich. Bahman is an Iranian-born physicist and Carmen is a Uruguayan software engineer. The family moved to Bethesda, Maryland in 1986. Ariane left for New York City in 1999 to study art at Parsons School of Design, earning a BFA in 2004. She lived in some of New York’s alternative neighborhoods, first on the Lower East Side in Manhattan and then in Brooklyn. She worked on her paintings while also developing a career as a graphic and web designer. With her holistic view of the world, she also practiced yoga, meditation, outdoor sports, and swimming. She participated in several exhibitions. In 2018 her work was exhibited in Punta del Este, Uruguay and in April 2019, the Juan Risso Gallery in Madrid presented a solo exhibition of her paintings.