By sheer internet-overlap-happenstance, I fell upon a video about Mary Whyte.
Mary is a stunningly talented artist who works mostly in large scale watercolor and creates studies of people – their souls, their likenesses, their livelihoods, their beings. She is wondrous as an artist. She is magical and memorable as a human being. I say this because Mary and I went to college together more than a few moons ago and she was lovely, talented and memorable then, and has never left my mind.
Through dedication, passion and a protean work ethic, she has become a master in her field – a portrait artist of the first rank, someone to admire, someone to appreciate.
It’s hard to be an artist. That’s something people don’t understand enough. Not that they have to, I guess. It’s hard to be anything, continually, effectively. But to literally “do you” (a phrase which is tossed about too glibly these days), to honestly and boldly bare your soul in an artistic platform is revealing and nakedly brave in a somewhat different way.
Sometimes people take notice and are drawn into a painting that challenges them, excites them, comforts them, speaks to them. That happens with Mary’s work. The conversation is real. I imagine viewers saying to themselves, “Oh, I see you, and you, with your thoughtful expressiveness, see me. Thank you for that.”
Success is measured not in how much we accomplish, but in how much we overcome.
— Mary Whyte
Have been missing these - so glad I found them again - you paint such pictures with your words as well :)