b. 1918
Marion Bode was a Western New York artist who specialized mainly in watercolors of landscapes, in addition to acrylics and a craftsman in textiles and printing. She was a Wisconsin native who graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee with both her bachelor and master degrees in art education. She also attended the University of Guanajuato, Mexico. Beyond schooling, she has traveled widely across the U.S. and Europe, and her paintings display a positive response to nature. The inspiration and influence of Wisconsin, California, Mexico, Monterey, and Michigan landscapes are prevalent throughout her paintings, which mirror lush juxtaposition of colors and concentrated imagery. Before moving east to teach at Buffalo State College in 1959, she co-founded the Wisconsin Watercolor Society in 1952 with Emily Groom, and also taught on the faculty of Milwaukee Downer College, the University of Dubuque, Iowa, and Winona State College. She was also an instructor for eight summers at the Ox-Bow Summer School of Painting Saugatak, Michigan. The Watercolor League of Western New York was also cofounded by Bode and held it’s first exhibition in the Upton Gallery at Buffalo State in 1965. Her watercolors have been exhibited all over Wisconsin and Western New York, such as the 30th and the 37th Western New York Exhibition at the Albright Knox, the Wilcox Mansion Gallery, and the Burchfield Center in 1981, along with many one-man shows. She considered her paintings to be within the American tradition of landscape painting, and in the watercolor tradition of artists such as Winslow Homer and Charles Burchfield, along with the mixture of Claude Monet, Emil Nolde, and Georgia O’Keefe.