"Small in stature, large in the arena of life." Marion Pike was a third-generation native Californian and a distant relative to both Kit Carson and Benjamin Rush. Cultivated and engaging, Pike had a tremendous capacity for fun and a great love of people from all walks and stations of life. She was not only a painter, Marion was also an entertainer who loved an audience. Her parties in Hancock Park and in Paris were momentous and brilliant occasions.

She introduced a different sense of style in the representation of living subjects but refused labels or style characterization. She refused to be a prisoner of her own style.

She traveled frequently across the Atlantic, visiting with numerous friends and family while embarking on new adventures in her artistry. And she painted everywhere: from Barbados to Paris; in an Indian hut high in the highlands of Guatemala; in a shikara on Lake Dal in Cashmire among the lotus and the reeds; in the Sologne, in the Auvergne, in Corsica, in Venice, in Moscow, in Firenze, in Amsterdam, in Istanbul, Egypt, Buenos Aires, Lima, Angkor Vat, Hong Kong, Kyoto and Mukden.

All her life, she refused media hype and manipulation, and the artificial value posted on art by the Madison Avenue marketplace of the era so she seldom exhibited her work. With the influential and dedicated collectors she had, it would have been easy. But Marion Pike had the integrity to desire recognition for her art, not for her Rolodex.

In 1965 Marion was commissioned for a portrait of Los Angeles Philharmonic musical director Zubin Mehta for the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center. And in October, 1966, her portrait of Ronald Reagan, then running for governor of California, graced the cover of Time Magazine.

She was well-known within her circle and her paintings were collected by the likes of Ronald & Nancy Reagan, Bob & Dolores Hope, Rosalind Russel, Frank Lloyd Wright, Coco Chanel, Claudette Colbert, pianist Arthur Rubenstein, Lucille & Norton Simon, surrealist painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti and many others.

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