Salon Space Exhibition
Coming Soon
Gathered: A Collection of Scrolls
About the Artist, from the Artist
Mary McCowan
This exhibition is a deeply personal one, featuring peices from Mary's daily, creative and spiritual practice reflecting on her experience of the world.
Mary's work is characterised by repetition, everyday materials and intutition and is an invitation to personal, creative and spiritual engagement.
Creative, a maker, an artist —- that’s me. It’s who I am at heart. As a young child I recall happy hours of unrestricted play at home doing my own thing, rudely interrupted by going to school with rules, bells, expectations and conformity.
I just loved being on my own playing. And I still do.
Fortunately I had a like-spirited childless aunt who encouraged and fostered me.
And always there were books, like Hidden Art, The Artist’s Way, and Drawing on the Right side of the Brain.
Art classes were too confronting and constraining. I failed.
However I am very grateful to 2 mentors, Joe De Lutiis and Mary Peacock whom I continue to see monthly. They gently encouraged me to find my own way. And I did, even entering art in local exhibitions, winning occasional awards, and selling some of my work.
But I wasn’t commercial. I began to understand my art was more about the process of making, like an inner voice, and plain enjoyment.
Silent retreats really suit me, give me unlimited time and space to ponder life as I make art. I continue to offer this opportunity to others facilitating occasional silent retreats.
My joy is to make spaces where the spark of creativity may catch alight in others.
Artist Exhibition Statement
The name of the Gallery, “Art and Alchemy” caught my eye and I wondered, “might this be a place to exhibit some of my own work”. After a visit and a chat the answer was “yes”. Excitement was in the air.
Around the same time I noticed I was rolling pieces of my work into scroll-like forms, partly as a practical way of storing them. A new thought took root: “perhaps they are scrolls, and perhaps I could gather and show a collection of them”. The idea grew. And so did a question. “What are these scrolls about, saying to me”?
My art mentor says I’m a material thinker and I know this to be true. My fingers lead my making, slow me down and bring to consciousness this and that. It’s a gentle, lifelong process. It is a simple form of alchemy where the physical process of making runs alongside a reflective place of inner transformation.
Georgia O’Keeffe wrote, “Art makes the unknown known, catching, crystallising your simpler, clearer vision of life”. These days I work mostly with recycled materials that become something new and beautiful to my eye. I stitch, collage, love repetitive mark making, and transforming my free morning writings. My work is playful, intuitive, unplanned, slow, and experimental. A big challenge is to trust myself and the work, not to be deterred by the critical voice that so easily creeps in.
You are warmly invited to this exhibition.
Come and See.
Come unhurriedly, quietly, with attention, noticing what catches your eye. Be surprised.
Please feel free to pick up and handle the small scrolls, unrolling and rerolling, rearranging playfully.
Perhaps they may stir your own curiosity and creativity.
Most of all Enjoy!
