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“I love painting the outdoors. As I travel, I make quick sketches or paintings. If I am riding my Harley, I try to memorize certain vistas and paint them later in the room. I take these sketches and studies into my studio to work into larger paintings. I take photos, but the freshness of the plein air paintings allows me to remember the wonderful colors and light that no photograph can show. As a result, my paintings are representations of what I see and feel, not necessarily of what is actually there.”

Mary was born in Murray, Utah, and grew up in the neighboring city of Midvale. She loved to draw as a young child, usually horses. She asked her father if he would sell his car and get her an all-white horse to keep in the garage. Obviously, that didn’t happen! But she didn’t stop drawing those horses!  As an adult, she began painting in a class that taught watercolor techniques for the classroom.

What started as a way to bring art into her classroom ended in a love of painting. She has studied with Carl Purcell, Timothy J. Clark, and continues to study with Ted Nuttall and Frank Eber. She is currently studying at Visual Art Institute with Bruce Robertson and Shelly Redford Young. Mary volunteers for the Utah Watercolor Society. She is a signature member of UWS, Utah Watercolor Society, and a signature member of WFWS, the Western Federation of Watercolor Societies.

She is a member of Art at The Main, a co-op gallery in the Salt Lake City Main Library. She lives in Holladay, Utah, with her husband.