Artist's Statement

Although I have painted almost all my life, I consider myself a late bloomer. My early years were spent painting a shopping list of different genres: landscapes, nudes, flowers, still lifes, commissioned portraits, and illustrations for children's books. I was just plain happy to be painting and grateful that my work helped to pay the bills. While my earliest watercolors and oils were hardly masterful, the hours spent holding a paintbrush helped me to develop my technical skills as well as an eye for composition. Eventually my paintings came to look less like the work of others and more like mine.

I have always believed that as artists we don't choose our vocation. We might learn the vocabulary of color, hone our craft, scratch and claw, and persevere our way to achieve a certain level of expertise and recognition, but we don't choose our style and subject matter any more than we choose our preference for a certain flavor of ice cream. This remarkable gift of art is something I can't explain any more than I can say how I ended up in South Carolina, painting a group of African American women, or how I ended up along the Moon River in Georgia, painting a crabber, or in Scottsdale, Arizona, sketching a tattoo artist. Art chooses us.

I have been especially fortunate that my work has been the instrument for many lasting and meaningful relationships. There have been many who have encouraged me along the way, especially in the lean years, when kind friends bought my work and probably stored the paintings in a closet. Others have tirelessly and continuously cheered me on from behind the scenes: my husband, Smitty; my manager, Katie Lindler; the staff at Coleman Fine Art; and my family and friends. All have given me a life that, as used to visualizing possibilities as I am, I could never have dreamed would be so good.

To be an artist is to give proof of God and the beauty that surrounds us. I have had the privilege of painting the people of our times, and in them I have discovered the profound qualities of the unrelenting human spirit. The binding commonness of our emotions is what drives me to keep painting, to keep exploring, and to want to demonstrate that painting a true portrait is far more than just capturing a likeness. Each resulting image, if done with earnestness and compassion, is a collective portrait of us all.

Mary Whyte

Mary Whyte in her studio, 2010
Photograph
Photograph: Coleman Fine Art