New Mexico Light Play oil • 24 x 36

Casual notice of Mary's landscapes reveal wide-open spaces and a quietness that is a result of many years of hiking, camping, and rafting trips into the deserts, mountains, and rivers of the Southwest. Her landscapes are painted on location in the natural light (en plein air). A common place to find her painting is in the Jemez Mountains in Northern New Mexico. Years ago she purchased a cabin deep in the Mountains near the Valle Grande Nature Preserve as a retreat and found the quiet isolation to be a great help in her pursuit of the delicate nuances of the landscape. Bandelier National Monument, which is only a short drive from her studio in Santa Fe, is another favorite painting spot. "Bandelier has a spiritual richness that creates a very intense experience in my artwork," says Mary. Frederick Franck, the author of several books about the Zen of seeing and drawing, has influenced her working process a great deal. She has learned that she must trust that "the delight in touching and feeling the trees and cliffs on the paper" is going to work toward the success of the painting, and thus, half the battle is won.

Benjamin from the Market oil • 22 x 18

Mary is also intent on accurately representing what she sees on the canvas, so the other half of the battle for her is to understand the physics of light and its play on the landscape. She wants to know the "why" of what she's observing. She concentrates on making accurate drawings and studies in the pursuit of the correct colors, contours, perspective, and composition.

As with her landscapes, Mary's portraits do not document the subject with photographic accuracy so much as they capture and interpret the personality and character of the person on the canvas. She's more interested in the human factor and the sameness that we all share, each in our own unique way.

Georgia O'Keeffe has been an inspiration to Mary more than any other single artist because of her independence of thought, action, and boldness in the use of design and color. The tenderness and sensitive emotions of figure artists Kathe Kollwitz and Mary Cassatt have also had important influence on her perception of the strength of the human form and spirit, especially of women. Other historical artists that have influenced Mary's work include Francisco Zuniga, Thomas Moran, John Singer Sargent and Diego Velasquez. Favorite contemporary artists include Ned Jacob and Albert Handell, both of whom have excellent drawing skills and intuition when they work.

Morning Shadows pastel • 16 x 20

When I am at my peak of creativity, my paintings evolve as though I were composing a song. I capture my subject by developing a rhythm of looking, seeing, feeling, and recording. I establish a tempo of going "in and out, up and down, around and through"; it's sort of a dance to chase and catch the subject's personality, spirit, and soul. As I converse with the person, the water, the mountains, or whatever I'm painting, a story develops: it's quiet here and I feel alone; she's intelligent and he's an "old soul", what a pair!; the clouds are so delicate and so heavy, it's going to storm and the wind will blow and change this world into something unlike I've seen; her red hair is so curly and so sensual. a story forms in my head and goes on and on until I'm finished. The wet, thick paint on my brush is a baton directing the instruments in my orchestra. I sing and dance with my heart as I apply them to the canvas: directing, interpreting, and sharing my joy.