Marcelle Foxley Roemmich grew up in the Matanuska Valley in Palmer, Alaska. Though she started life nestled in the mountains of the valley, she has always also had a love of the ocean. As a child, she traveled to Southeast Alaska every summer where she would spend her days on the ocean with her brothers: swimming in the frigid seawater, pulling up crab pots, exploring small islands from a skiff, and discovering the diverse, marine creatures living in the tidal pools. The awe-inspiring, adventurous summers on Admiralty Island were influential to her sense of identity as well as catalyzing the aesthetics for her art.

She attended Montana State University, pursued a degree in Art Education during the winter months and returned to Whittier, Alaska each summer to work on boats. In 2014, she became a boat captain. Ever since, she has worked captaining vessels each summer and taking winter sabbaticals to focus on creating her art and playing in the snow.

Her grandfather, a commercial fisherman, left a large stack of nautical charts in a shed on his property on Admiralty Island, just outside of Juneau. The island she spent much of your childhood on. Marcelle’s uncle, a commercial fisherman himself, gifted her these antique charts. What better to do with unique, weathered charts then paint on them?! She now has an extensive collection of charts and maps from throughout Alaska gifted to her from various people pleased to get rid of “old clutter.”  Typically, she paints marine life, animals, boats, mountains or planes geographically specific to the charts.

Marcelle is inspired by her maritime influence daily working as a captain for Major Marine Tours in Resurrection Bay, out of Seward, Alaska.  She is equally inspired by the mountains that she chooses to recreate on in her free time. In the mountains and on the ocean is where is feels most at peace, and where she draws her creativity from.