Marilynn Brandenburger has been painting and exhibiting professionally since 1980. After teaching art workshops around the country for 40 years, she retired to devote full time to her painting. An enthusiastic traveler, she enjoys translating her sojourns into paintings and illustrated watercolor journals.

Marilynn’s artwork has been shown in more than 75 national juried exhibitions and her drawings and paintings have appeared in regional and national magazines, exhibition catalogs, national park brochures and five books, including The Best of Colored Pencil 5 and The Island Within Us. She has received grants from private and public foundations, earned signature status in the Colored Pencil Society of America and won appointments as Artist-in-Residence at the Gratiot Lake Conservancy, the Smithgall Woods Conservation Area, the Ragdale Foundation, the Brush Creek Foundation and Glacier, Everglades and Isle Royale National Parks.

Marilynn works in ink and watercolor in the studio and en plein air. Her subjects are primarily landscapes that have been preserved and protected for their unique beauty or ecological value.

About her work, she says: ”I love sketching and painting on site! The natural world truly inspires me, and being outdoors makes painting landscape a fun challenge. So when my husband and I travel, I paint as we go. I also make notes about the places I paint and they become the basis for small stories I post along with my paintings on Instagram, Facebook and my website blog."

Marilynn holds a Bachelors degree in anthropology from Tulane University and a Masters degree in art education from Florida Atlantic University. A member of the Plein Air Artists of Colorado, Women Artists of the West and American Women Artists, she makes her home in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her husband, photographer and travel-buddy par excellence, Allen Brandenburger.