Marion Casson :: Making Art of All Kinds

Marion Casson makes her home in the Bay of Quinte area, where she spends her time creating. She paints using mostly acrylics, weaves on a floor loom —which she says has been sadly neglected in the past year— and felts with wool and silk.

Although she certainly can appreciate the importance of technical expertise, her  main interests lie in colour, design, style, and creative experimentation. Her son once remarked, “When there are a whole row of sinks why would you just turn on one tap?”

When Marion looks at her paintings she sees strong similarities of subject matter and colour presentation with her felted wall pieces. Since she was a painter first, the painterly aspects of home, location, environment, and the abstract influence all her felted work.

Marion has been a weaver for a long time, but she has found in the last year that she’s transitioning more and more to felting, though she hasn’t quite let go of weaving. Recently she’s been combining her felting with her weaving, and sometimes the other way around. The resulting garments are gorgeous, beautifully textured, and a colourful mix of both media.

Awhile ago Marion needed a gift for an artist friend. She asked her friend to send her a photo of her painting so she could interpret it in a scarf. After her friend wore the scarf to the Belleville Art Association Gallery Marion received dozens of requests from other members. Thus the Art Scarf industry was born. Some members even asked for small matching bags for their cell phones.

While she still makes Art Scarves, she has branched into themed Scarves. Scarves for special days like Valentines, for quilters and LGBQ, and most recently, bright yellow daffodil scarves for cancer survivors. She works on a table that was a wedding gift from her grandparents to her parents. With the extensions out it’s the perfect length for scarves. She lays out two side-by-side. Her dining room opens onto her studio and she lays out a palette of pre-felts there for the Nuno felting.

When things open up again the scarves will be available in a local retail outlet and on the Studio Tour in Prince Edward County. Currently Marion’s bags and scarves are available at the Sidestreet Gallery, Wellington, Ontario

Marion realizes that the Pandemic has caused very real hardships for many but —being lucky enough to live near the water in a beautiful park-like setting— she has found the virus has given her endless time for reflection, cleaning out, gifting (old stock) and even a surge of new ideas. When they said that another lockdown was coming, she believed them and loaded up on art materials. Marion would like to share these ideas with fellow felters. If you are interested in  getting in touch, contact her here

Thank you to Marion for sharing your work with us. We are very appreciative.

Enjoy this comic strip bio made for Marion by her daughter, Nell Casson.