Mary Weatherford (born 1963) is a

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

–based

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

. 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., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

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. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, 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 (28, ...

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

Claremont McKenna College Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It has a curricular emphasis on government, economics, public affairs, finance, and internat ...

, ''I've Seen Gray Whales Go By'' at Gagosian West, and ''Like The Land Loves the Sea'' at

David Kordansky Gallery David Kordansky Gallery is an art gallery established in Los Angeles's Chinatown neighborhood in 2003. History The gallery was founded by David Kordansky, a former conceptual and performance artist, in a space on Bernard Street in L.A.’s Chi ...

, Los Angeles. Her work has been part of group exhibitions at the

and the

Rose Art Museum The Rose Art Museum, founded in 1961, is a part of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, US. Named after benefactors Edward and Bertha Rose, it offers temporary exhibitions, and it displays and houses works of art from its permanent co ...

Brandeis University Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...

Life and career

Weatherford was born in

Ojai, California Ojai ( ; Chumashan languages, Chumash: ''’Awhaỳ'') is a city in Ventura County, California. Located in the Ojai Valley, it is northwest of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara, California, Santa Barbara. The valley is part of the east– ...

, and raised in Los Angeles. She studied visual arts and art history at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, 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 a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

. She returned to Southern California in 1999 and later received an M.F.A. from the

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts is a graduate program associated with Bard College that grants Master of Fine Arts degrees. Founded in 1981, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (otherwise known as the Bard MFA program) is a nontradi ...

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains within the Hudson River Historic District ...

. 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 Neon Light or Neon Lights may refer to: __NOTOC__ * Neon lighting, a form of lighting Music Albums * ''Neon Lights'' (album), a 2001 album by Simple Minds EPs * ''Neon Lights'' (EP), a 2021 EP by Annie Songs * "Neon Light" (Blake Shelton son ...

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 1961 ...

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 The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

. 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 openi ...

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 in a "flood stroke" to ...

are held by the

: ''Madame Butterfly'' (1989), ''Violetta'' (1991), and ''First Riddle'' (1991). In 2016, Mary Weatherford joined The Metropolitan Museum of Art's The Artist Project, where contemporary artists engage online with The Met's historical collections connecting contemporary art with artistic traditions across different eras. 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. In 2023, David Kordansky Gallery presented abstract paintings by Weatherford at Frieze Seoul.

Life and career

References

Further reading