Mary Swann

For all my adult life, I have lived in and painted landscapes outdoors in rural places in northern Maryland and in southern Pennsylavania. Weather, big skies, and the quality of the air have always excited me, but I have also loved the stories that come with living in the country. Over the years, in various media, deer, horses, raccoons, foxes, snakes, geese and flower gardens have kept appearing in my work. In the 1990’s I made dozens of appliqué quilts depicting true dramas that had taken place in the natural world. I would hand-write the story on white material and sew it on the back. A decade later, I took up printmaking at MICA and many of these same animals  showed up in my etchings and collagraphs. 

 I am originally from New York and Long Island. I spent my early years near big bodies of saltwater and would miss them terribly if it weren’t for the wide open spaces of our pastoral landscapes here in Maryland. I studied Romance Languages at Radcliffe and have traveled quite a bit since then to visit family members in faroff places. In 1965, I was a student at the heady New York Studio School and later on, when my children were growing up, I was lucky to become an undergraduate at MICA. Amazing opportunites have come my way as a result of this connection.