Mary Breneman, Island Life, 2022

Oil on linen

Mary Breneman debuts a small series of expressionistic landscapes and still lifes. Her intimate paintings are inspired by both plein air and photographs taken on meditation walks through nature. They are at once representational, abstract, and emotionally expressive. Her gestural brush strokes reveal not only the artist’s hand on the canvas but her witnessing of the scene. Until 2014, Breneman exclusively painted in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she lived and owned a gallery for 15 years. Her paintings were widely collected and celebrated for their vibrance and representation of Mexican culture and landscape. When family called her back to the East Coast, she settled in Hudson, New York, where her work has taken on a new palette and vision.

“My work is going through a change that I don’t see until it’s on the canvas. I find I’m more interested in form and color than rendering. In pairing subjects down to their essential details, I am less intentional and more open to intuition. My paintings are pure expressions of where and who I am!”