Mary Armstrong

Approaching Storm (2020)

Approaching Storm (2020)

Mary Armstrong split her time between Georgetown Maine, Venice Italy, and Newton Massachusetts, where she taught painting at Boston College from 1989 to 2018.  She received a BFA in 1972 from Boston University and, in 1977, was awarded a scholarship to attend The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Since 1980, Armstrong’s paintings and drawings have been shown in solo and group shows at Victoria Munroe Gallery and Graham gallery in New York, at the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, The Decordova Museum in Lincoln, Masachusetts., The McMullen Museum at Boston College, Victoria Munroe Fine Arts in Boston and Cross-McKenzie Gallery in Washington, DC. She has also participated in exhibitions in California, Connecticut, Florida, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Ireland.

Armstrong has received numerous honors and awards, including, in 1995, a Fellowship from The Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, Co. Mayo, Ireland and a grant for works on paper from The New England Foundation For The Arts. In 1980, she received a grant for works on paper from The Mass. Artists Foundation. In 1979 and 1980 she was awarded two consecutive fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Statement:

I am always interested in discovering how our assumptions about imagery in painting prejudice our expectation of how those paintings are made. 

For me, the act of painting is a search, to explore the relationship between the physical surface and the illusion being created and to establish a dynamic visual space where they will exist together.

I have been painting the landscape on the coast of Maine and the deserts of Southern California for years. I am, in every moment, in awe of the dance between earth, water and sky. In these paintings, I wish to create the illusion of a vast and endless space that is full of incident and light. I am striving, in my daily practice in the studio, to continually improvise from my perceptions; this makes the process very active, containing many layers of oil paint and wax (on wood panel).

EDUCATION

  • 1977 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture,
    Skowhegan, ME

  • 1976 M.Ed., Lesley College, Cambridge, MA

  • 1973 B.F.A. Boston University, School of Visual Arts, Boston, MA

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

  • Art, Art History & Film Department, Boston College 1989 to 2020

  • Charles River School, Art Teacher Pre-K through 8th Grades 1976 to 1990


CURATORIAL EXPERIENCE

  • McMullen Museum, Boston College: 1994 Original Visions: Shifting The Paradigm, Woman’s Art, 1970-1996

  • Re/Dressing Cathleen, Contemporary Works from Irish Women Artists, NewArts Center, Newton, Ma.

  • The Artist in Rural Ireland, March 2003

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

  • Boston Public Library

  • Danforth Museum, Framingham, Ma.

  • Federal Reserve Bank, MA

  • Fidelity Investments, MA

  • Decordova Museum, MA

  • Graham Gund Collection, MA

  • Readers' Digest Corporation, NY

  • Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy, NY

  • Amerada Hess Corporation, NY

  • A.T. & T. Long Lines, NY

  • Chemical Bank, NY

  • Hospital Corporation of America, TN

  • Miami-Dade Community College, FL

  • Northfield Mt. Herman School, Northfield, MA

HONORS AND AWARDS

  • 2018 Returning Fellow, Ballinglen

  • 2014 Returning Fellow, Ballinglen

SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS

  • 2019 Mary Armstrong: Conditions of Faith, McMullen Museum of Art, BC

  • 2016 24 Hour News, O’ Neill Library, Boston College, Newton, Ma

  • 2014 Drifting Waters, Cross Mackenzie Gallery, Washington, DC.

  • 2014 Troposphere: 12Kilometers of Heaven, CMCA Rockport, ME

  • 2013 Mary Armstrong, Paintings, The Rhodes Art Gallery, Northfield, MA

  • 2011-12 Any Given Moment, Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston, Ma

  • 2009 Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston, MA

  • 2007 Memory of Desire: Mapping The Venetian Lagoon, Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston, MA

  • 2006 24 Hour News, Paintings, Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston, MA.

  • 2003 Heart Beats, Oresman Gallery, Smith College, Northampton, MA

  • 1993 Victoria Munroe Gallery, New York, NY

  • 1991-92 A Ten Year retrospective, Felicita Foundation, Escondido, CA

  • 1990 Victoria Munroe Gallery, New York, NY

  • 1987 Victoria Munroe Gallery, New York, NY

  • 1985 Victoria Munroe Gallery, New York, NY

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

  • 2017 Mary Armstrong and Phillip Adams, Cross MacKenzie Gallery, Washington, D.C

  • 2011 Armstrong and Stellacio, Cross Mackenzie Gallery, Washington, D.C

  • 2017 United States Embassy, Kyiv, Ukraine, Art in Embassies Exhibition

  • 2017 United States Embassy Djibouti, Art in Embassies Exhibition

  • 2016 New Work, New York, Woodward Gallery, NY., NY

  • 2013 Silver Shore, Graham Gallery, NY, NY

  • 2013 Passion and Pursuit in American Art, Graham Gallery, NY, NY

  • 2011 Off The Wall, Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA 

  • 2010 Way After Canaletto, Art Gallery, Salem State College, Salem, MA

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  • Mark Jenkins, “Mary Armstrong,” In The Galleries, The Washington Post, 8/31/14

  • O’Sullivan Michael,  “Gallery Opening Of The Week,” Arts and Style, The Washington Post, 5/18/12

  • Cate McQuaid,  “Interplay of Light” The Boston Globe, January, 2012

  • Cate McQuaid,  “Into The Dream” The Boston Globe, January 2010

John DanosArmstrong