Mary Ann Currier

Mary Ann Currier

Mary Ann
Currier

b. 1927      STUDIO IN LOUISVILLE, KY

Midwest Region of USA
Mary Ann Currier
After nearly seven decades of making realist paintings, Mary Ann Currier needed a break. So when a studio drawer filled with colored paper broke—requiring her to empty its contents and seeing the materials layered one atop another—she decided to make some abstract collages. The artist established a simple set of rules for the four-inch square works: they’d contain one right angle and additional diagonals. From each of the 33 ensuing collages, she made a painting, which was both an abstract composition and a faithfully realist representation of the paper cutouts, neatly blending two opposite approaches. She felt refreshed.
 
Currier was then able to return to her practice of setting up still-life objects in her studio and meticulously rendering them in colored pencil. Only now, she has departed from the large- scale works she did before, working instead in the four-inch square scale of the collages. Often isolating a single object on a blank ground, she celebrates the colors and shape of the subject while constantly reaffirming the power in the long tradition of making art through direct observation.

I’ve had people say, ‘Oh she must work from photography.’ They’re not ready to believe this is by direct observation.

Mary Ann Currier