Marie LaFleur grew up in Laredo, Texas, where the colors, music, and stories of the border shaped how she saw the world. Surrounded by the blend of two cultures, she learned early on that beauty often lives in the in-between spaces, the moments you can’t quite put into words, but you can feel in your bones.

That love for capturing the unspoken led her to study art at Columbus State University, where she deepened her skills and learned how to bring emotion to life on a canvas, even a digital one. Today, she works primarily in digital art but approaches it like a traditional painter, building each piece layer by layer until it feels alive. She wants you to almost feel the softness of a wing, the warmth of sunlight after a storm, or the charge in the air before rain.

Her work often draws on nature and symbolism: the steady gaze of an angel, the restless roll of thunder, the shimmer of a butterfly in mid-flight. Each one carries a little of her own story and the spirit of her hometown.

For Marie, art is a way to connect. She hopes her work makes people pause, even for just a heartbeat, and feel something familiar: a memory, a question, a sense that they’re not alone. To her, that quiet connection between artist and viewer is what art is really about. If she can create that moment, she’s done what she set out to do.