Best known for her oversized charcoal drawings of humans and animals, her aesthetic came from journalistic photography and her work relies on strong draftsmanship and powerful compositions with great psychological depth.

"[1] For the span of her almost 40 year career as a fine artist, Szalay was an instructor of life drawing at every major art institution in Northeast Ohio.

And then she continues the construction and places a beautifully sculpted three-dimensional nose to sit on it.” Judy Takács, Curator for “Majority Rising: Cleveland's Female Gaze”, Artists Archives of the Western Reserve,[2] After matriculating with a BFA and MFA from Kent State University, Marilyn Szalay began her art career in the late 1970s as a photo journalist for the Sun Newspapers in Cleveland, Ohio.

She maintained a purity and integrity for the art form of traditional 35mm black and white photography, processing and printing her own film and enlargements in her home darkroom.

In 2013, the "from WOMAN VI" exhibition was dedicated to Marilyn Szalay by curator Mary Urbas, who used her drawing, "Self-Portrait with Frog" on the poster.

[20] Her work was published by American Artist Magazine in 2000 as part of "Realism Today," [21] a national juried competition with a physical show was at the John Pence Gallery in San Francisco.

[23] Her reputation as a tough teacher who didn't mince words, was chronicled by a student, Brian W. Fairbanks, to whom she taught life drawing at Cuyahoga Community College.

Timmy is a portrait of a mountain gorilla, representative of Szalay's work with the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo as an artist, volunteer and docent.