By permission of the artist, The Cyber Art Show is pleased to feature the first of two 12-piece exhibitions of works by contemporary American landscape painter Mary Iselin (born 1955 in Massachusetts, USA).

Mary Iselin is a professional oil painter from New England. Living very close to Mount Monadnock, she finds this mountain a motif of which she never tires. Says Mary, "Mount Monadnock is such a dominant presence, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, in the area where I live. It is different in every season, in every weather, and in every hour."

When Mary sets out for a plein-air painting excursion, she always brings several canvases, since the light will be different so soon, and she has discovered that trying to change what has just begun is, obviously, not a good idea. “It is better to paint three paintings onto three different canvases than to try and put three different paintings onto one canvas!”

A sense of place is extremely important to her. "Painting," she says, "represents the feeling of a motif in one’s bones and one’s soul. The longer one paints in a certain location, the more that location reveals its secrets of color, light, atmosphere, and luminosity."

Other inspirations include the farm animals and agricultural scenes from the working farm on which she lives. She has bred sheep for nearly forty years, and they have become, to her, almost a still-life motif, in which to explore light, color, and atmosphere. Draft horses are another specialty.

Iselin is a former faculty member of the Sharon School of Art/NH Institute of Art.  She is represented by 3 Pears Gallery in Dorset, VT; The Mill Brook Gallery in Concord, NH; the Sunapee Fine Art Gallery at Sunapee Landing in Sunapee, NH; and Creative Encounters in Keene, NH.  Her work has been featured on Rural Heritage TV, in conjunction with the annual Sap Collecting Contest.  Her work is in both private and public collections in the US, Europe, and as far as Australia.

Her degree is in Creative Writing from McGill University, where she “painted her way through,” and has has studied with many fine artists, including Robert Collier, Peter Granuci, Alex Farquarson, and Dennis Sheehan.