"I am happiest painting outdoors with the clouds over head and the wind to my back..."
Mary Byrom is an internationally exhibited artist who has received awards for paintings, sculpture and design. She is acclaimed for her studio and plein air work in oils and watercolors. An accomplished painter, she has an academic background in fine art. She works mostly from life, using the Alla Prima method of oil painting with a focus on plein air landscape painting. True to the practice of plein air she is outdoors year round painting on location. It is from this collection of field sketches that her large studio paintings are developed. The artists of the Hudson River School and the American Western Plein Air tradition have been influential in the development of her work.
"When I'm outdoors, I am consciously slowing down. I am looking and thinking about what I see and how I see it. I love the experience of being out in nature, watching the pace of the light crossing the landscape and the clouds moving across the sky.”
"Painting in plein air is wonderful and difficult; it takes me to beautiful places and is a distinctly demanding process. Climate and weather are challenging and I'm always learning and growing as an artist. It's a great and humbling experience"
She is known internationally for her blog “Fresh Paint, Fresh Air,” a journal of her plein air painting adventures, and is an author and featured arts columnist for print and web media. Mary paints on location year round in favorite sites throughout New England and the American West. She is a member of Oil Painters of America, American Society of Marine Artists, the American Impressionist Society and Plein Air Painters of Maine.
