Mary Mendla

I create artworks that express my love for the land in an intuitive style utilizing painting, collage, photography, and video. My sensitivity for color and nuance has led me to express this connection to the natural world through seeing withna quiet eye, a way to discern atmospheric shifts in color, texture, and interaction of shape with deep sensitivity. My use of abstraction encourages the viewer to see deeply through the surface, beyond the physical, to experience the artwork through heart and spirit. 

My paintings are never planned prior to beginning. What comes through in each piece is a combination of gathered visual inspiration from nature, remembered life experiences, and the feelings that remain long after an experience has passed.

Forests, shorelines and waterways, and the changing light of the sky feature heavily as abstract subject matter in my mixed media artworks. I play with the contrasts between liminal and littoral space to create subtle contrasts in meaning in an ethereal style meant to open the viewer to their own interpretation of meaning.

I work in a variety of media including oil, cold wax, pastel, loose pigments, inks, and acrylic. Brushes are rarely used. Non-traditional tools such as squeegees, palette knives, brayers, and handmade tools are used for their abilities to create textures and marks that reveal layers created deep within each painting.