Movers Shakers

Marian Steen

By Alice Handelman

Marian Steen, an award-winning St. Louis artist, began drawing and painting in the third grade. Recalling an early moment when she received an award for her painting of a little boy in overalls, she says: “I knew then that I wanted to be an artist and never looked back.”

Now, as an artist for more than 40 years, she says she fell in love with the medium of watercolors “because of its fluidity and capriciousness.”

Steen sells her abstract artwork through galleries, at street fairs and directly from her studio. Petite in stature with a magnetic personality and warm smile, she says: “I love meeting the people that buy my art.” The two-time breast cancer survivor recalls the time she told her doctor that he was her customer before she became his.

Born and raised here, Steen lived with her parents and brother in University City until high school, when they moved to Olivette. She graduated from Ladue Horton Watkins High School, studied at the University of Cincinnati and transferred to Washington University in St. Louis’ School of Fine Arts. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1965. After graduation, she taught junior high school art until she started a family. When she divorced in 1978, she tried to figure out how she could earn a living. “I taught workshops for years and eventually started doing outdoor art festivals, which I love,” she says.

One of two street artists on the committee that created the Saint Louis Art Fair, Steen says that inspiration for her paintings “comes mostly from the world around me.” She adds: “I look at the world through my artist’s eyes and think I see things differently than the average person.”

A favorite painting of hers evolved after she saw a “wonderful rust stain on a purple truck.”

Over the years, Steen has developed numerous watercolor and collage works, including her Passage, Quilt, Seasons and Thicket series. She also teaches art programs at her grandchildren’s schools each year.

Steen met her husband, retired Olivette Police Chief Rick Knox, one night when he was on duty as an officer. When her dog was growling at her bedroom window, he was the one who answered her 911 call. “He calmed me down, and we got to know each other as friends over the next couple of years until we started dating,” she says.

The couple lived together for 10 years before getting married in 1995 at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Together, they have turned their home into a showcase for art. “We acquire much of our art, which includes paintings, sculptures, teapots and lithographs, by trading with other artists at shows,” she says.

Steen has served the community on the boards of Women and the Kemper and the Women’s Society of Washington University. Recently, she joined the board of Art As Healing Foundation, a nonprofit that creates art with cancer patients. In past years, while volunteering her time with the National Council of Jewish Women, she taught art at the St. Louis County Juvenile Detention Center and at an orphanage. She has also participated in mentoring programs at the St. Louis and Belleville art fairs and was recently accepted into the Art and Culture Program at St. Louis Lambert International Airport.

A mother of three daughters and grandmother of six, she says her main form of exercise is “walking 2 to 4 miles as many days as possible” and taking barre and yoga classes.

However, her favorite way to exercise her mind and body is riding Shadow, a Tennessee walking horse that lives at Meramec Farm in Bourbon, 70 or so miles southwest of Ladue: “It’s absolutely beautiful there. I love to travel with friends through the pastures, roads and woods. I am a cowgirl wannabe.”

An innate storyteller and award-winning photographer and writer, Alice Handelman provides Ladue News readers with a glimpse into lives that enrich St. Louis.