Indigenous Artist Bio
From a young age, Mary has nurtured an innate and relentless drive to express herself through visual art. Consequently, she pursued a professional fine art education (BFA, Concordia University), culminating in earning a MFA degree (University of Windsor).
Not one to settle for restrictive choices, Mary explored a myriad of artistic mediums on paper, board and canvas, often layering them. She has created her work by extracting visual excitement for texture, pattern, colour, light and form found within landscape and human-built environments, resulting in a visceral visual response.
Mary’s art has regularly exhibited both within Canada and internationally (USA, Sweden, the UK). Her work has won multiple awards and she has completed a mural commission for the Toronto Eaton Centre. Her professional career has also included teaching studio art and art history at various community colleges and art centres.
Artist Statement
Having grown up in the Kingston area surrounded by such a rich terrain of islands and mainland, waterways and stone, the diversity found in nature and landscape has endlessly inspired Mary’s artistic pursuits. Each environment communicates its own unique character, revelations and visual energy, thereby igniting her imagination.
Her mixed media works and acrylic paintings on canvas reflect an ongoing interest and fascination with these contrasts found within a variety of surroundings, be they local or farther afield.
The fluid energy of nature’s organic forms and the more rigid geometric structures of architecture are often explored in her body of work. These environments, most often reconstructed from memory, challenge the viewer’s perception of how nature, landscape and architecture can be experienced as both compatible, and at times, competing entities.
Email: mobrien@kos.net Website/Social: www.maryobrienstudio.ca Instagram: maryobie9
