Mary Mackey

Mary Mackey began her career in the visual arts with a distinct focus on photography. In the early 1990's, she earned an Associate's Degree from the Colorado Institute of Art and went on to work and teach as a professional photographer in Berlin and London. "My background in photography," Mackey says, "supports the importance of composition in my painting. While the elements differ, their relationships are crucial."

With her background in photography, Mackey's work thus far has been exclusively in abstraction. She is primarily influenced by post-war modern American artists. In the mid-1980's, her interaction with Mark Lunning of The Open Press introduced her to the world of printmaking: "In the beginning, I successfully incorporated photographs as collage elements into the monoprinting process, which in turn led me to focus solely on printmaking."

Recently, Mackey's work has taken several exciting turns. She now experiments with unconventional printing surfaces such as mylar and vellum. She is also exploring the use of different types of paper while using a mixture of grease pencils and oil paints mixed with mineral spirits. Mackey has also made the dramatic shift from non-objective abstractions to painting recognizable images such as landscapes, still lifes and simple forms, which, as she puts it, "are rich in form, color, composition and texture."

Mackey's work has been exhibited in Japan, New York, San Francisco, Texas and Denver. Her pieces are featured in numerous corporate collections around the globe.

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