Artist Process Video Series Featured Interviews

Artist Process Video Series: Mary Fedorowski’s Journey To A Finished Painting

Written by:

Lillie Therieau

Nov 08, 2021

Mary Fedorowski is a painter and muralist based in Chicago. Her sparse, colorful, and atmospheric images marry nature and architecture. She’s currently having a solo show at the Martin, which is closing November 13th. Get down there to see it if you can, and get a look at Mary’s incredible landscapes, patterns, and spaces in person.

Mary Fedorowski’s Journey to a Finished Piece

She starts each of her pieces in a sketchbook. It’s part of her daily sketchbook practice, where she sits down and puts ideas to paper. Mary finds it important to record as many of her ideas as she can, whether or not they end up as full-fledged pieces! When all of the ideas are collected in one place, it helps Mary work toward a final vision for a new piece.

When Mary runs into a creative block, she likes to surround herself with new and inspirational images that can help lead her to new ideas. Recently, she’s been consulting a book of desert images as well as two books of photography of the Palm Springs area. Mary’s work often revolves around desert imagery, which she finds generative and surreal. She also loves to incorporate aspects of mid-century modern architecture for its flat planes and sharp angles.

Next, she tries to isolate the meaning and central theme of each piece of work she starts. For Mary, intention is important to her creative process. She likes to ask herself a series of searching questions about each piece, pinning down the palette, the mood, and the backstory.

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Now it’s time to move into the studio! Mary starts with the color selection and mixing process. Colors are a very important component of her work, so she spends a lot of time developing her palettes for each piece. Mary uses color to communicate mood and time of day, as well as to emphasize space and shadow.

After the color selection process, she lays out her initial sketch on the final canvas. She then sets out the base colors, which will form the background and undertones of her painting. At this point, the shapes are less defined. Then, she goes back through the piece adding highlights, shadows, and defining lines.

Finally, Mary has to decide when to stop working on a painting. It can be tough to know when a piece is done, so sometimes she has to force herself to walk away. At this point, the painting has gone through the full process from sketched idea to final painted canvas, and it’s ready to be shown!