The “About Me” section always feels like a Catch-22 to a creative. Part of it feels like that space between being half asleep and half awake. You want to say everything and nothing because your work has it’s own voice, and if your fluent enough will offer different perspectives of you to the audience. “Create for you and let the audience have their own thoughts.”

Let’s start anyways.

I’m Marilee, I grew up in the Midwest where my ideas grew around me. At young age my mother, Mary would buy me sketch pads. Naturally I drifted into a love of drawing as my main passion with writing following close on it’s heels.

Around my High School years I started drawing portraits which I would sell to my teachers and classmates. This set me off on the road to portrait painting which started my career with what became known as “Cloud Nine Portraits”. I did a lot of work in my community of painting people for families, painting a lot of kids, grandparents, celebs you name it. I love and still love the happiness it brought to both myself and the people who invested into it. I still get many messages from people not only reposting it but reaching out to let me know how much the work means to them. Thank you guys for your unlimited support!

My style is what is known as hyper realistic/high contrast black and white acrylic painting with it’s signature standout look. Where you can say “Hey that’s a Cloud Nine Painting.”

I worked very hard on my craft for many years and I enjoyed it. A few years after my mothers passing, I decided that I wasn’t going to spend my whole life in this area I had become good at. You know I always like to tell people you can be great at more than one thing. So I started designing clothes and fell in love with that as well. I went from designing a simple t-shirt to a cut- and sew sports jacket. I really just like pushing for the expansion of my mind, thoughts and vibes.

Creating clothing brought out my words as well, the writer in me and the photographer in me. Most days I just pick the channel of energy that feels good and has enough clarity to come through to allow me to create.

Please visit my blog for more in depth interviews with the artist.

What’s to come?

I am currently working on my first Ebook, which is a collection of short form stories as well as I am in pursuit of film. If you would like to help support these future projects please click the Donate button.