Marisa Stratton: You Will Never Be Forgotten

The portraits of artist Marisa Stratton are a glimpse into the artist’s own digital life. In You Will Never Be Forgotten, Stratton’s subjects are taken from screen captures of FaceTime conversations, her Tik Tok “For You” page, and her Instagram feed, revealing who and what she looks at. 

Stratton’s paintings permit viewers to see her subjects as she does: her paintings offer the eye a chance to linger in an unhurried and intimate manner on moments that are designed to fly by. In so doing, Stratton gives an account of life as it is being lived in the 21st century; specifically, that it occurs in the flesh as often as it does on a screen. In You Will Never Be Forgotten, Stratton aligns herself with a painterly tradition of portraiture, from ancient Egyptian funereal paintings to the present day, immortalizing her subjects as they appear now for eternity.

Marisa Stratton is a painter whose work explores contemporary portraiture in the context of screens. Marisa holds a BFA in Communication Arts with a minor in Painting + Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has shown in multiple group exhibitions including Virginia MoCA, (Virginia Beach, VA), Hamiltonian Artists (Washington, DC) and the Delaware Contemporary (Wilmington, DE). Stratton has been featured in New American Paintings and currently teaches painting at Georgetown University.