My Artist Bio

Artist Biography

Cynthia Ellen “Blue” Mariano

Artist Biography

I was born in 1952, in Boston to my jazz musician father and his muse, my beautiful Scottish-American mother from Kansas.

After a year in Boston, while my father was finishing his degree at Berklee (then Schillinger House of Music) my family moved to Los Angeles where my father joined Stan Kenton’s big band, which at the time was at its height of fame. These years are the ones that set my identity as an artist in motion. My dad painted with oils, practiced his saxophone at home, composed on the piano, and our social circle consisted of people just like him, highly creative and involved in the arts.

I felt deeply drawn to my father and his inner world, and I identified with him. My parents saw in me an enchanted child who was sensitive, intuitive and creative. They enrolled me in piano lessons early on, and helped me form my self awareness as a visual artist. I do know how fortunate I was, for one, to be recognized as a creative child, and also to be so well nurtured as a blooming artist. I never lost that identity they helped me form.

But, as the often chaotic world of a driven and ambitious jazz musician would have it, our family was broken up by the time I was 7.  I went back to Boston to be raised by my Italian immigrant grandparents, thus helping to form another important piece of my identity. I stopped drawing then, and threw myself into piano practice.

A lifetime passed before I was reunited with my father at 13. On the first Christmas back with him I was given a complete oil painting set. I never used it, but was touched that he had remembered. The intervening years had been difficult for me. I lost myself and became deeply depressed. I became pregnant in high school and got married as soon as I graduated. I’ll never regret having my daughter. She’s been an incredible blessing, but in high school I was identified as a student bound for art school. This plan was thwarted by my personal choices. I wouldn’t go on to study art until I was on my own, a single mother, my daughter in school full time, and I was well into my 20s.

I took a double major (fine arts and psychology) at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, with exciting plans to enter the field of art therapy. I did teacher training and got certified to teach art from grades K-12. And after I graduated I studied for my masters degree at Lesley University in Expressive Therapies. It was a wonderful program, and I grew and matured in so many ways there.

Skipping to the now, after a decades long career in teaching and counseling, I have arrived at a time in my life where I can explore my own creativity. I’ve been painting since 2023, and making collage art since 2025. I’m retired, married to a wonderfully supportive man, and I have grandchildren and great grandchildren. To pick up the thread of something so long pushed aside is both exhilarating and somewhat sad. I still fight with the darkness I’ve known, and reach high up for the saving grace of resilience. In my art I hope to project optimism, healing, joy and peacefulness. I believe in art as a healing  practice. I am grateful for every opportunity to work as an artist, to exhibit and to partner with others in the visual art world.

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