About Marie Chapian
From the age of five, Marie’s life centered around the world of show business. While still in her teens living in New York City, she wrote performance poetry, stories, one-act plays and played leading roles in Broadway musicals in summer stock and off-Broadway productions.
She created whimsical illustrations for (Actors) Equity News magazine and also for the popular fad of short pocket books called non-books. Enamored by the art of abstract expressionists and the pop art movement, she began studying art seriously and enrolled in art classes at the Art Students League. In time she began painting large oil paintings which were accepted for exhibitions at two Greenwich Village galleries.
In the following years she wrote and illustrated four award winning children’s books and authored over 30 Christian inspirational books. A complete list of published works can be found at MarieChapian.com. m. Her book of poetry, “Slow Dance on Stilts,” won the San Diego Book Award.
As a New York Times best selling author, Chapian has received several awards including a nomination for the Pulitzer, Pushcart and National Book Awards. Other awards include two Angel awards, the Gold Medallion, and Best Book of the Year awards, San Diego’s Book Awards, Cornerstone’s Book of the Year and the Italian-American Women’s Award of Achievement, Collage Artists of America Honorable Mention, Topanga Gallery, Topanga Canyon, CA, inclusion in the Outstanding Young Women of America award and the 2012 book of contemporary artists, “Faith and Art.”
Her art and writing education includes the University of Minnesota, New York’s Art Student’s League, UCSD, Mira Costa and Palomar Colleges. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College and served on the faculty of Mira Costa College In Oceanside, California.
Her paintings have shown at the Herbert B. Turner Gallery, Del Mar, CA; Front Porch Gallery, Carlsbad, CA; Coal Gallery Carlsbad; Solana Beach Library; North Coast Repertory Theatre Gallery, Solana Beach, CA; Starbucks Gallery, Del Mar; LaJolla Art Assoc.; North Coast Calvary Church, Carlsbad; San Fernando Valley Arts and Cultural Center, Los Angeles; Baum Gallery, San Marcos, CA; Kruglac Gallery, Oceanside, CA; the Collage Artists of America exhibitions with solo shows at Galerie Rochelle Monique, San Diego, and El Camino Country Club, Oceanside, CA. Winner of 2 People’s Choice Awards, she is a member of the Collage Artists of America, the Artists’ Alliance at the Oceanside Museum of Art and LUX Museum, of Modern Art, Encinitas, CA.
Marie is the mother of two grown daughters and grandmother to two granddaughters.