Mary Proenza

About the Artist

Mary Proenza lives and makes art in Riverdale Park, MD. Her artistic disciplines include painting, drawing, printmaking, and writing. She has received residency grants from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Jentel Foundation, Springboard for the Arts, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, New York Mills Cultural Center, and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. Her written art reviews have been published in Art in America and The Brooklyn Rail, and her visual art appears on the covers of books from John Daniel & Co. and CDs from CMH and Arhoolie. One of her current projects is a graphic memoir combining prints, paintings, drawings, and writing; a chapter of this has been published in Rosebud magazine. In 2017, Mary Proenza joined the full-time art faculty at Marymount University, Arlington, VA. Previously, she taught in the City University of New York system, at Marymount Manhattan College, at New York Academy of Art, and at UC Santa Barbara. She completed a BA in literature at UCSB's College of Creative Studies, an MFA in painting at New York Studio School, and an MFA in creative writing at The New School.

Artist's Statement

My work explores social, political, environmental, and personal themes, and starts from a sense that the world is inexhaustibly interesting. I combine perception and other visual sources with memory, imagination, and narrative, and I work back and forth between drawing, painting, printmaking, and writing. I find that an interdisciplinary practice sharpens my vision, illuminates unexpected facets of subjects, and generates new approaches and ideas. I begin most projects with perceptual drawing and painting. I complete some works entirely onsite, often over many sessions. As I work at specific locations over time, visual scenes conflate with historical, social, political, environmental, and personal concerns. Observation is a consistent spur to my curiosity and imagination, whether working onsite or in the studio. In the studio, I further explore perceptual images through variations of media, scale, emphasis, light, and color, as well as through further associations and invention. One of my current projects is a graphic memoir combining paintings, drawings, prints, and writing; a chapter of this has been published in Rosebud magazine. I believe that all art is fundamentally communicative and exists on a continuum. Along with creative work, teaching puts me into close contact with those essential aspects, as does writing about the work of other artists.