“Old Man of the Mountain”, 2024
Acrylic on panel
11" x 14"
 
@marygibneyart 
marygibney.com
 
Mary Gibney is a Minneapolis artist. She has a BFA from the University of Minnesota, and has exhibited widely in Minneapolis as well as in other locations. She is a current member of Rosalux Gallery.  I have never confined my artmaking to a particular subject, although most of my work is figurative in some way.  My latest paintings of bar scenes, cemeteries, cats and strange people have an underlying abstract structure of color and shape which has to be proper in my mind before I feel it's finished. It’s an intuitive correctness that isn’t definable in an academic sense, but by flow, color interaction, and pattern.  I also have a strong attraction toward body parts, the weird, the other, a sense of otherworldly-ness and unseen presences.  Sometimes they show up in the form of a skeleton or ghost, especially in my bar scene paintings.  I don’t plan a painting in detail. Once I have an idea I make some rough watercolors perhaps, then get started directly on the canvas.  After applying the first broad areas of color and shape I make many changes to the forms and color interactions in order to get the feeling I want.  I try not to overthink and in the process a painting can transform in multiple ways and often I paint over sections that felt fairly good or finished in order to get to a new energy.  I’m searching for the excitement of everything coming together in a way I can’t predict from the beginning.