Educated at Western Reserve University, Pratt Institute, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Marjorie Portnow received her MFA at Brooklyn College where she studied with Philip Pearlstein and Gabriel Laderman.
She paints landscapes on location and is able to capture a unique sense of time and place. John Arthur, in his book Spirit of Place: Contemporary Landscape Painting and the American Tradition describes Portnow’s method of painting: "She carefully works out her composition by viewing through a string grid, an old device used by Dürer and Van Gogh, and blocks the image onto the canvas with loose, colored washes of oil: She then slowly develops and tightens the composition, bringing it to the clear airy conclusion that typifies her work."
Speaking of her own sense of place Portnow has stated: "Place for me means an area I have lived in and been moved by enough to paint it many times over. Enough so that I close my eyes I have its image, its particular sense of space and light, very present in my mind, both visually and physically...I tend to pick a few places and go back to those places over and over, day after day, to walk and to paint (like Cézanne) building up many layers of associations...I feel these places are as necessary to me as food."
Portnow has received fellowships to Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony and numerous awards including The Hassan Purchase Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an Ingram Merrill Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant.
