Rogene Mañas is a mixed media artist living in Eugene, Oregon. After years of being a graphic designer/illustrator, owning her own international card company while painting landscapes on the side, she made an abrupt change after she retired at age 58 while spending winters in Mexico. Becoming enamored with the colorful, primitive, and allegorical nature of Mexican folk art, she began making art from her inside world, rather than from the outside world. It quickly became an obsession and now she spends her days creating work from her own thoughts, feelings and personal stories. She has invented and developed her own ways of making art using mixed media materials and assemblage techniques. She incorporates an air-dried clay called "paper clay" to make textural paintings and bas-relief artwork. She uses acrylic paints, mediums, and collage materials in finishing her pieces. She works on canvases and wood panels, but also creates three dimensional work when the mood strikes. She studied art in many ways over many years. As a student in fine arts at the University of Oregon, she left school to work as an illustrator in advertising and design agencies. Over the years, she used professional workshops to develop her skills in several disciplines including computer design and illustration; oil, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, and gouache painting; collage and assemblage work; ceramics, jewelry and print making. She loves the freedom of combining materials and methods under the umbrella of "mixed media" rather than conforming to any one discipline to express herself.
