Marsha Polier grew up surrounded by prints of famous paintings received by her father, architect Lewis Polier.
Marsha helped him matte and place these prints on a special wall in the home. The wall of stories “with their settings full of detail and information about lifestyle, time, and place” developed Marsha’s inner eye. At four, she had her own easel; at nine, her parents gave her a Kodak Brownie.
Marsha’s mother, Afton, an exuberant, outgoing woman encouraged imaginative and artistic pursuits in her four daughters. An art career for Marsha seemed natural. “As a child, nothing was more exciting to me than a box of new crayons.” 
Marsha studied studio art, art history, and photography at UNC-Greensboro. She had to learn her craft, and in 1968 that meant physics, specifically, a Physics of Light class. “Our all-female class mixed darkroom chemicals from scratch in large cylindrical vats—stirring with paddles, wearing rubber aprons, gloves, and goggles,” Marsha recalls. A perfect negative and fine printing were very important.”
She transferred to the School of Art, now VCUarts, at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where she would be introduced to graphic design and hone her skills in photography and illustration. “I wanted my work to look like no other photography I’d seen. For several years, I avoided, as much as possible, studying other photographers in museums, galleries, and publications in my effort to ‘listen to myself.’ 
“Having said this, I confess I’ve always admired the work of two early female photographers: 19th century English photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and early 20th century American photographer Nell Dorr. Both photographed family and friends in home environments, much as I ended up doing.”
At VCU Marsha, a painter at heart, decided to mix paint and photography. “One day, I was sitting at my drawing board with an image of an old house with a garden on matte surface photography paper. I already had my watercolor palette on a white china plate full of colors I’d custom mixed for another project. I used a clean, very dense, tiny photographic sponge to control water as I stroked on color with sable brushes.”
During the 1970s, Marsha began a series that would win a Silver Medal at a juried show at the NC Museum of Art. The series, Ecstasy, stems from a visit to Virginia with friends. Four girls jump for joy on a mountaintop, all flinging their long hair back at the same moment. 
“As one of four sisters, these Ecstasy images have special meaning for me. They conveyed exhilaration, freedom, happiness and energy. This feeling represented me, a self-portrait I suppose.”
Today, she finishes her black and white images with watercolors, pastels, colored pencils, and oils. It’s painstaking, no computers involved. Each photo can take up to 30 hours. “With hand coloring, I love being able to soften and mute color and be inventive.”
Much of her fine art portraiture has been of children. “For me, it was best to stage in their space, to collaborate with the children and use some of their ideas to develop my ‘storytelling.’ ”
“When I married at 33 and had children, I spent many hours in my darkroom or coloring in my home studio after the kids were in bed at night.”
Marsha sacrificed to keep making art: freelancing graphic design and waitressing, photographing, and writing a column for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “The fine art photography rarely supported itself. I did what I felt drawn to, not to what I deemed practical as a career. I never ‘decided’ to be a photographer or an artist. I simply couldn’t resist the pull it had on me.”