Mary Crittenden

Acrylic on Illustration Board 16.5" x 12"

Mary began painting before she was seven years old. Her father brought home enamel paints from work. Although these didn’t work too well, she did the best she could with the tools and talent she had to work with. Mary was hooked. She continued painting through high school where her teachers encouraged her to try for art scholarships; And so it went.
Now, as a middle-aged adult, Mary Crittenden is still painting. The enamel was replaced long ago with acrylics and oils, and the subjects in her paintings are so life-like they almost look like soft photographs. In fact, her paintings have a three dimensional appearance because of her expertise in handling depth perception. Mary has always enjoyed old photographs for the feelings they evoke of a more leisurely era. “I try to make them come alive,” she explains. Her flair for telling visual tales, her sense of design, and her love of color has led to Mary’s current focus: using bright, almost impressionistic oils to make historical snapshots as fresh as if they had been photographed today.

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