Mary’s Biography
An inspirational teacher at school encouraged me to take A-level Art, which I hugely enjoyed. This led to my gaining a Foundation certificate in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School, where I experimented with several forms of Fine Art for a year. I then gained a degree in Social Sciences at Salford University. This deepened my understanding of people and society. For example, I studied factors affecting inequality such as race, class, gender and sexual orientation. This knowledge has also informed my art. It led to me taking opportunities to curate and contribute to Black History Month Exhibitions focusing on issues affecting the Black Community through Art.
Working with people whilst living in diverse countries has been a big feature of my life.
My early years were spent experiencing the different landscapes, cultures of the people of the then Gold Coast through travelling the length and breadth of the country with my family as my Father carried out his work as an Educationalist.
Encountering some of the 48 languages of our small country in Africa was an early reality for me as my Mother adapted to speak several of the local languages as well as English.
After getting married in 1977, I was fortunate to embark on a period of travelling with my new husband, teaching English in Borneo, Norway and the Netherlands. This broadened my horizons and experience hugely. I taught English to Malay, Chinese, Dutch and Norwegian people whilst travelling around the world.
My work interests having encompassed working with people in education, I later trained to be a counsellor in an educational setting. I gained employment heading up a support system for trainee lawyers at The Inns of Court School of Law, where I facilitated anti-discriminatory support for all disadvantaged trainee lawyers, including ethnic minorities, women, people exploring their sexuality or identifying as LGBTQ.
Training for this role involved working on my own psyche and that of others. This has enhanced my artistic interest in the study of people, such as life drawing and portraiture. Curiosity about people’s internal worlds underpins much of my artistic work and interests.
Becoming registered blind in 2009 was a blow, but also an opportunity to find ways of working with the challenges presented by sight loss.
Soon I will present an exhibition which draws several of these experiences in my life together. I will be looking at how people of the African diaspora living in the UK have become prominent in this society, breaking through barriers. I will be linking their portraits to directions in art I first encountered in the 1960s, such as Andy Warhol’s screen prints, whilst linking them in my style to a Ghanaian artistic and philosophical tradition of “Adinkra”.