Mary Hughes
Website
Biography
Mary Hughes is a native Bostonian who began her painting career at ten years of age when on vacation in Maine with her grandparents. Her grandmother, an amateur painter, gave her a postcard of the Atlantic coast with a wave crashing on rocks, which Mary then meticulously copied in oil. Her awkward teen years thankfully involved high school art classes and summer art programs at local museums and art schools. That eventually led her to the painting program at Boston University, where she earned a BFA. She later pursued a MFA at Massachusetts College of Art.
Mary has exhibited in solo and group shows at the Copley Society of Art, South Shore Art Center, the St. Botolph Club, the Bromfield Gallery of Art, the Woodstock Museum of Art and various exhibition spaces throughout New England.
She has received several awards and fellowships, including the Fulbright Scholarship and a Residency at Anderson Art Ranch in Colorado. Her work is included in public and private collections in the US and Europe. Mary’s studio is located in the historic Fenway Studios in Boston, which she happily shares with her hound dogs Millie and Elsa.
Artist Statement
The landscape has remained a constant inspiration in Mary’s artwork, from the direct pleine air painting she did in locations such as southern France, the west coast of Ireland and inland New Hampshire. Even in the abstract imagery that has dominated her work for the past decade or so, references to nature are evident.
In her current work, Mary explores mapping, mark making and the passage of time. The drawings and paintings are built upon meandering lines formed in reaction to previous layers, recalling contour maps, topographical lines and nautical charts. The organic forms reference the landscape while also referencing abstract patterning mark-making as an act of confirmation.
Gallery Affiliations
Copley Society of Art
Awards
2019 Jurors Award, Winter Members’ Show, Copley Society of Art, Boston, MA
2009 Visual Resources Association Travel Award
2009 Copley Society Anderson Art Ranch Scholarship
2009 Jurors Award, Winter Members’ Show, Copley Society of Art, Boston, MA
2008 Artist’s Grant, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
2007 Joseph J. Gazzola Prize, Equinox Exhibition, Copley Society of Art, Boston, MA
2007 Board of Governors Award, Crisp Exhibition, Copley Society of Art, Boston, MA
2005 Visual Resources Association Travel Award
2001 Artist’s Grant Vermont Studio, Center, Johnson, VT
1997 Fulbright Scholarship to Ireland, Institute of International Education, NY, NY
1990 Bernard Pfreim Scholarship, Lacoste School of Art, Lacoste, France
1986+87 Merit Award, Boston University School for the Arts, Boston, MA
Artworks in Museums and Collections
Khoury College of Computer Science, Northeastern University
Office of the Provost, Northeastern University
College of Science, Northeastern University
Education
BFA, Boston University School of Art
MFA, Massachusetts College of Art
mary@mchughes.net