Mary Weatherford: Canyon–Daisy–Eden

Over the last three decades, Mary Weatherford has developed a rich and diverse painting practice, from her early 1990s target paintings based on operatic heroines, to the expansive, gestural canvases overlaid with neon glass-tubing that brought attention to Weatherford’s practice in the 2010s. Mary Weatherford: Canyon–Daisy–Eden presents a survey of Weatherford’s career, drawing from several distinct bodies of work made between 1989–2017. As constant experiments with color, scale, and materials, these works as a whole reveal the continuity of Weatherford’s interest in human experience, both personal and historical.

Originally from Ojai, California, Weatherford earned a B.A. in art history and visual arts from Princeton University, and an M.F.A from the Milton Avery School of Fine Arts at Bard College. In 1985, she participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program where she developed her earliest paintings, some of which include colored targets and silkscreened images of flowers, vines, and female figures titled after literary heroines. A profound and longstanding study of nature is reflected in other works from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Weatherford incorporated elements of assemblage into a series of stained canvases, including physical shells, sponges, and starfish. In 2005, Weatherford embarked upon a pivotal series of paintings based on plein-air drawings she made of a sea cave on Pismo Beach, a coastal area a few hours north of Los Angeles.