Mary Weatherford (born 1963) is a

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

-based

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

. She is known for her large paintings incorporating neon lighting tubes. Her work is featured in museums and galleries including the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desi ...

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown ...

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...

, and the

High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (2 ...

. Weatherford's solo exhibitions include ''Mary Weatherford: From the Mountain to the Sea'' at

Claremont McKenna College Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It has a curricular emphasis on government, economics, public affairs, finance, and international relations. CMC is a member of the Claremont Colleges c ...

, ''I've Seen Gray Whales Go By'' at Gagosian West, and ''Like The Land Loves the Sea'' at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work has been part of group exhibitions at the

and the Rose Art Museum at

Brandeis University Brandeis University is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational institution sponsored by the Jews, Jewish community, Brandeis was established on t ...

Life and career

Weatherford was born in Ojai, California and raised in Los Angeles. She studied visual arts and art history at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

, graduating in 1984. After graduation, she lived and worked in New York where in 1985 she was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in the Independent Study Program of the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

. She returned to Southern California in 1999 and later received an M.F.A. from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at

Bard College Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark. Founded in 18 ...

. Early in her career she also collaborated with her late sister, the writer Margaret Weatherford, on

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

and worked as a bookkeeper for the artist Mike Kelley. A career breakthrough came in 2012 with Weatherford's ''Bakersfield Project'' exhibition at the Todd Madigan Gallery at California State University at Bakersfield where she was an artist in residence. The Bakersfield paintings marked the first time she incorporated illuminated neon light tubes into her abstract paintings. The series was inspired by the colourful neon signs she saw on old restaurant and factory buildings while driving around Bakersfield. Weatherford used neon in the Bakersfield Project and later series of paintings, such as ''Manhattan'' (2013), ''Los Angeles'' (2014) and ''Train Yard'' (2016–2020) to recreate the sensations of specific places or moments. In an interview for Gagosian Quarterly she once said, ‘I try to depict or deliver not only a visual translation of a place in time, but with that, the scent, the sound, and the feeling. Is it chilly? Is it hot? Is there a clanging sound?’ Her work was included in the exhibitions ''Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting'' at the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 196 ...

and ''The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World'' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2014. That same year she received the $25,000 Artist Award from the Artists' Legacy Foundation founded by Viola Frey. Examples of Weatherford's abstract paintings incorporating neon lights are held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Hammer Museum. Another of her neon paintings, ''Past Sunset'' (2015), was shown at the

National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since ope ...

in the 2016 exhibition ''NO MAN'S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection''. Three examples of her early work combining acrylic, ink and

screen print Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh ...

are held by the

: ''Madame Butterfly'' (1989), ''Violetta'' (1991), and ''First Riddle'' (1991). An exhibition of works inspired by Titian’s “The Flaying of Marsyas” at Museo di Palazzo Grimani opened in Venice during the 2022 Venice Biennale.

Life and career

References

Further reading