Mary Weatherford (b. 1963, Ojai, California) has become increasingly recognized as one of the leading painters of her generation, as well as one of the most astute and daring practitioners taking on the legacies of American abstraction. As she explores and expands the medium’s possibilities, she honors its history by seizing opportunities to break with tradition at every turn. Over the course of her career she has produced feminist revisions of large-scale Color Field painting, posited new directions for the landscape genre, and explored the social histories of California. Her notable incorporation of sculptural elements––including the neon tubes that have been a presence in her work since 2012 ––as well as her fearless and physically embodied approach to painterly gesture, have allowed her to employ abstraction as both a formal language and a poetic, highly personal mode of engagement with the world outside the studio.
Mary Weatherford is the subject of a survey exhibition, Canyon–Daisy–Eden, that was on view earlier this year at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, and will travel to SITE Santa Fe in 2021. She has also presented solo shows at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California (2014); Todd Madigan Gallery, California State University at Bakersfield, California (2012); and LAXART, Los Angeles (2012). Recent group exhibitions include Aftereffect: Georgia O'Keeffe and Contemporary Painting, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2019); Feel the Sun in Your Mouth: Recent Acquisitions, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2019); Between Two Worlds: Art of California, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017); NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2015); Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2015); and The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014). Her work features in the permanent collections of many institutions, among them the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Brooklyn Museum, New York; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2019, Lund Humphries published an in-depth monograph surveying the artist's oeuvre. Weatherford lives and works in Los Angeles.
Mary Weatherford
Eden, 2017
Flashe and neon on linen
117 x 234 x 4 3/4 inches
(297.2 x 594.4 x 12.1 cm)
Mary Weatherford
double wave at Windansea, 2015
Flashe and neon on linen
112 x 99 inches
(284.5 x 251.5 cm)
Mary Weatherford
ocean, 2014
shellac ink, ocean water and sand on Gampi Torinoko
15 x 20 inches
(38.1 x 50.8 cm)
framed:
19 3/4 x 24 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches
(50.2 x 62.2 x 3.8 cm)
Mary Weatherford
canyon, 2014
Flashe and neon on linen
112 x 99 inches
(284.5 x 251.5 cm)
Mary Weatherford
Coney Island II, 2012
Flashe and neon on linen
103 x 83 inches
(261.6 x 210.8 cm)
Mary Weatherford
love forever (cave) for MW, 2012
Flashe on linen
79 x 93 inches
(200.7 x 236.2 cm)
Mary Weatherford
Brooklyn, 2008
Flashe on linen
78 x 100 inches
(198.1 x 254 cm)
Mary Weatherford
vines, 2008
Flashe on linen
37 x 44 inches
(94 x 111.8 cm)
Mary Weatherford
the spiritual in art, 2006
Flashe on linen
44 x 48 inches
(111.8 x 121.9 cm)
Mary Weatherford
absorbent, 2000
Flashe and sponges on canvas
66 x 82 inches
(167.6 x 208.3 cm)
Mary Weatherford
Nagasaki, 1989
oil on canvas
82 x 82 1/4 x 1 3/4 inches
(208.3 x 208.9 x 4.4 cm)
Mary Weatherford
Portrait of Orson Welles, 1988
enamel on canvas
60 x 120 inches
(152.4 x 304.8 cm)