On view: March 28 - October 12, 2025
Opening Reception & Artist Talk: Friday, March 28, 5-8 p.m.
Contact: hello@mcasantabarbara.org
Location: MCASB Satellite at The Riviera Beach House, 121 State St, Santa Barbara, California
In Motion: Marie McKenzie & Marlene Struss is a two-person exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) Satellite at The Riviera Beach House, bringing together the paintings of Marie McKenzie and Marlene Struss. Both artists explore themes of transformation, perception, and the fluid relationship between environment and self. Together, these works create a dialog between land and sea, real and surreal, stillness and motion—inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the ever-changing rhythms of nature and self-discovery.
McKenzie’s newest oil paintings envision the world of kelp through the lens of a tropical rainforest, exploring deep shadows and vibrant hues that blur the line between imagination and reality. Embracing movement, her work captures the ever-shifting nature of the ocean.
Struss's new Plant Portraits series adds silhouetted plant forms to her expansive otherworldly landscapes. These anthropomorphic figures, stripped of detail, invite introspection, mirroring a personality contemplating its surroundings, desires, and identity. The silhouette defined by the background and vice versa parallel the relationship between the individual and their perspective.
MCASB Satellite at The Riviera Beach House began in 2024 with the exhibition Changing Nature: recent work by Stephanie Dotson and Madeleine Ignon, and most recently Hương Ngô: Core Memory. MCASB Satellite at The Riviera Beach House is programmed through an annual call for entries for proposals by artists living and working between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, determined by a jury of regional art professionals. The 2025/26 Call For Entries will open on April 15, 2025.
Image caption: (l) Marie McKenzie, Bridge to Kelp Jungle II, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 36 inches. Courtesy the Artist. (r) Marlene Struss, Caught by the Moon, Acrylic on Wood Panel, 48 x 36 inches. Courtesy the Artist.
Artist Biographies:
In discovering kelp's vital significance and alarming decline in 2021, Marie McKenzie shifted her focus from imaginative seascapes to underwater visions, ultimately leading her to confront her fears of the ocean through freediving. This transformative, healing journey inspired her recent paintings and clarified her mission to share these "sequoias of the sea" with the world before they disappear. By illuminating the beauty of kelp forests, she strives to foster connection and contribute to their restoration through her partnership with SeaTrees—a nonprofit organization in Southern California that works with coastal communities to reforest the ocean.
Marie McKenzie lives and works in Ojai, CA. She studied painting at the University of Kansas and has been painting for nearly three decades. Her most recent solo exhibition was in Los Angeles in 2021, with previous solo shows in 2017, 2014, and 2013. Her work has been included in multiple group shows, including at Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara, as well as in museums such as the Ojai Valley Museum, Crocker Art Museum, Santa Paula Art Museum, and the Channel Islands Maritime Museum. McKenzie was recently awarded an arts grant from the Ventura County Arts Council. Her blend of abstract and realistic oil painting combines classical techniques with the unseen subject matter of our kelp forests. www.mariemckenzie.com
Marlene Struss grew up in Northern California and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 1973, working with such esteemed instructors as Irma Cavat, Howard Warshaw, and Larry Rivers. Over the course of her career Struss has created bodies of work both representational and abstract with diverse media including printmaking, pastel, collage, digital, and currently acrylic paintings on panel. She has developed a highly individualistic style of painting best described as biomorphic abstract expressionism.
Struss has exhibited throughout the United States and as far as St. Petersburg, Russia, and Seoul, South Korea, and steadfastly exhibits in Santa Barbara and Southern California. She is represented by 10 West Gallery and is a member of the Studio Artists and the Abstract Art Collective in Santa Barbara, as well as a member of Western Edge, a group started by the late Dorothy Churchill-Johnson whose mission is to procure and mount group exhibitions for museums in California. She is also represented by Marina Kieser in North Hollywood. Struss's work can be seen in many film, television, and commercial productions, including Man with a Plan, The Big Bang Theory, Mom, Lucifer, NCIS LA, By the Book, New Girl, The Better Half, Grey’s Anatomy, Ballers, and more.
Among the awards she has received are the Individual Artist Award in Assemblage from the Arts Fund of Santa Barbara in 2004 and the Best in Show Award at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art in its Tri-County Juried Exhibition in 2019. www.MarleneStruss.com
Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) seeks to enrich lives and inspire critical thinking through meaningful engagement with the art and ideas of our time. MCASB provides Santa Barbara and the Central Coast with exhibitions and programming that encourage discovery, cultivate new perspectives, and challenge the way we see and experience the world, ourselves, and each other. The MCASB Satellite program started in 2013 with The Hotel Indigo and presented annual exhibitions through 2017.
The Riviera Beach House is an artful boutique hotel situated steps from the sand in Santa Barbara’s eclectic Funk Zone neighborhood. The newly redesigned property has become a destination where people gather to enjoy curated experiences, explore local culture, and embrace the Riviera lifestyle. Maya Mallick, owner of The Riviera Beach House, is passionate about design and embraces art as an intrinsic part of the hotel experience.