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I'm a neuroscientist passionate about art, mental health and pharmaceutical discovery. I created this page to share my visual stories and to connect with my audience through creativity.

 

I invite viewers to gaze deeply within their consciousness and hearts.​ My encaustic paintings are inspired by psychology (I use art as an emotional outlet - to me it serves as a substitute for journaling), novel techniques, and the desire to play with mind-stretching associations. My art practice is a deeply personal process that dances at the edge of real and imagined existence.​

My inner conflict between my scientific thinking and my emotional world is expressed through surrealism. I enjoy discovering new exciting ways for self-expression via layering the molten semi-transparent wax-based encaustic medium using fire (the flame of a blow torch), sculpting the material, playing with its opacity, depth and color fusion. My curious nature has led me to continue expanding my palette of artistic tricks - learned by my own unique experimental innovations - such as the diffusion of pigment powder, colored sand and the inclusion of magnets, mirrors and various other objects to achieve certain visual effects. As an artist, my studio is my sanctuary where I can process the harshness of the real world and feel connected with myself and with nature.

I grew up in Budapest/ Hungary - I moved to the US in 2009 and to the Bay Area in 2011. I have acquired a Master’s degree in Bioengineering and a PhD in Neuroscience. After spending ten years as a basic Research Scientist at Stanford University (School of Medicine), I moved on to the private sector. Currently I hold a leadership (VP of R&D) position at a clinical-stage pharmaceutical startup company that develops novel therapeutics to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and brain cancer.

Explore the 3D rendering of my solo show at the Twin Pines Art Center in Belmont that took place in 2024 January-February: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=YySUtSpqFV1

Sleeping woman has a surrealistic dream about reincarnating into a tree in the morning sunrise
Flying camel with healed sutured with a needle in the haystack back loses heavy carriage and is carried by passion butterflies, symbols of the strong soul
Rorschach's abstract inkblot test images for personality assessment grow out of a woman's hair and tell various surrealistic stories
A woman's face in a cloud cries tears to water a skeleton's dead heart in a desert, to grow powerful flowers that aspire towards the sun symbolizing a state of feeling emotionally drained
Klimt-style femme fatale cat in front of cheese looking golden moon flatters the crow from Aesop's fox tale to drop the cheese
Klimt's The Kiss style cats whispering in front of cheese-looking golden moon while standing on Klimt's Tree of Life and mice riding bicycle built for two Big Dipper inspired by Kubrick
Scapegoat or back sheep juggling lemon loafs while dancing on eggshells and being targeted by narcissist's pointing fingers and by flying monkeys. When life throws you lemons, make lemon loaf
Woman growing in Mother Earth's uterus practicing self-love and self-compassion, and growing a white rose as the symbol of peace and symbiosis
Woman's forced metamorphosis into butterfly from larvae while she is unable to resist the gaslighting by narcissistic owl and black Cathoic widow spider who are waiting to hunt their victim down
Woman being pulled out of a narcissistic man's uterus by aggressive daffodils. Fused self-object, dual mother system, separation-individuation, narcissistic abuse, discard
Woman balancing a surrealistic large heavy vase that is her own enlarged bleeding heart ripped out of her chest. The heart grows an embryo inside and blooms a white rose. A morally superior hypocrate narcissistic death monk with Messiah complex stabs her to feel cognitive dissonance and bleed out. The majority of women has a deep rooted core vulnerability around fertility, desire for having a family, and an agony around the possibility of miscarriages.
Sisyphus rolling up a heavy gravestone, a hardened heart on top of a cliff, to get closure from an abusive narcissistic relationship. Prolonged grief, Yosemite, the heavy gravestone heart keeps rolling back, making this effort an eternal struggle and a curse by God
The old fisherman and the blue marlin sitting in a boat fishing for fishbone skeleton in a sea filled with sharks. Metaphor for the pandemic, opponents stick together to defeat invisible enemy
State of flow by Csikszentmihalyi
Insecurely attached female human-monkey figure clinging onto a lifeless male chickenwire surrogate mother. Harry Harlow's cruel monkey experiment to demonstrate attachment theory in romantic reationships
Narcissus spits and cuts tree and creates Messiah statue with Pinocchio nose and fake golden heart of it that's being carried by flying monkeys, while also throws an axe into codependent woman's back. Your own personal Jesus, reach out and touch faith
Female figure on Yosemite Half Dome steps off the cliff but projected angel looking shadow extends her wings and saves her
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in delirium from the hot sun, preparing to attack windmill giant
Lady Justice, the victim of narcissistic abuse, is standing in her coffin as Jack-in-the-box meanwhile invasive narcissuses as Biblical serpents compromise the balance between the heavy bleeding heart and narcissistic brain by throwing apples on the heart side of the scale

© 2023 by Marianna Kiraly

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