Drawn From Experience culls images from the rich and varied work of Pittsburgh artist, Mary Culbertson-Stark. Fifty mixed media works dating from 1984 to the present weave a visual journey capturing her celebrated style. Replete with highly personal and expressive imagery rooted in drawing; the exhibition invites the viewer into the world of a unique artist, a Pittsburgh original, whose mixed media musings align symbolism, humor, and wisdom with a life of shared experience.
Drawing has always been a driving force in Mary’s work and is again at the center of this exhibition. She is a storyteller. Her drawings are her narratives. She charges her compositions of familiar objects and scenarios with a candor and emotion that often suggest a metaphorical, sometimes mystic twist. The results are tooled commentaries reflective of the journeys of her life and the lives of those she has witnessed. Cerebral and playful, her work invites the viewer into a world which she views as an unfolding story.
A graduate of the University of South Carolina and University of Pittsburgh, Mary has exhibited extensively throughout the country. Locally, her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Andy Warhol Museum, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, and The State Museum of Pennsylvania. Mary has been honored with many awards for excellence encompassing both her art and her teaching acumen. Among her many accomplishments are three Skidmore College Art Fellowships in Painting and Drawing, an Associated Artists of Pittsburgh grant working with at risk adolescents, and three honors from the Pennsylvania House and Senate for her dedicated life's work in arts education. Her work is included in over 375 private and public collections world wide.
Mary’s work in arts advocacy spans four decades and continues. Proceeds from Drawn From Experience will fund an endowment currently in development with the Pittsburgh Foundation which will offer legacy exhibition and publishing grants to late career women artists.