Marna Schindler

A local San Diego Artist, Marna Schindler has spent the last decade exhibiting her paintings full-time at art festivals and galleries in California and across the West. Enrolled in art classes at the San Diego Zoo from an early age, she quickly knew her passion for drawing and especially for drawing animals and nature. This was something she would always preserve. At age 7 (while drawing a giraffe in oil crayon) she knew one day this passion would somehow be cultivated into a living.

Marna continued to enjoy art as a child, and as a result of creating a greeting card business with her best friend in 6th grade and selling their handmade cards door-to-door, she and her friend were featured in National Geographic’s Kids World. Marna went on to paint signs and murals for family and friends, restaurants, and shops, and became the in-house artist for her high school dances and theater club productions. While pursuing a Fine Arts degree from San Diego State University, Marna illustrated for the San Diego Museum of Man’s monthly Discovery magazine, as well as for San Diego State’s Daily Aztec. Her editorial illustrations at the Aztec captured two awards for the Aztec, and in a painting class in which her professor called her a “colorist”, Marna caught a glimpse of her future as a painter.

Marna describes her paintings as organic, playful and meditative. “When working on a painting, I find the best results come from a careful combination of focus and detachment. I think it is very important not to stifle the piece, and let it become what it wants.” Her subjects are almost exclusively animals and nature, and all are infused with vivid color, bold and expressive brush strokes, and what she hopes to communicate: an underlying sense of joy.

Marna was the 2016 Featured Poster Artist for the esteemed Indian Wells Arts Festival in Indian Wells, CA. Marna was awarded "Best in Painting" at the 2014 Sedona Arts Festival, and was the “Featured Artist” for San Diego ArtWalk’s 30th anniversary celebration in 2014. In 2007, Marna was also named Featured Artist for both San Diego Artwalk and Tempe Festival of the Arts, and is a permanent member of Tempe Festival’s Artists Advisory Committee. In addition to the dozen or so juried art shows in which she exhibits yearly, Marna is represented by Van Gogh’s Ear Gallery in Prescott, AZ, and most recently, the San Diego Zoo.

Marna is tremendously grateful to be living her passion, and appreciative of family, friends, and collectors who have encouraged and helped her on this path. She's also appreciative of her feline muses-in-residence, Hopper and Natasha. Marna is honored that a percentage of her art can help support shelters and organizations benefiting animals.