MARY IVERSON

Sublime

Showing October 8-30, 2010

Mary Iverson’s show Sublime, made possible in part by a 4Culture Individual Projects grant, contains large and small paintings and wooden sculpture. According to the artist, these “stolen images” mirror our country’s tendency to appropriate natural resources for private gain.

"My current paintings present an environmental dialogue by inserting stacks of shipping containers into images of pristine landscapes. Some of the background images in my paintings are cut directly from environmental magazines, some are copied painstakingly from historically important paintings, and others are excerpted from my own sketches and digital photographs then painted in the style of the Hudson River School. Into these pristine environments, all of which feature national parks, state parks or nature preserves, I scratch or draw measurement lines, then locate a plethora of shipping containers. In Ruby Beach with Containers, I paint the majestic beauty of Olympic National Park in the dramatic light of luminist painter Albert Bierstadt, then defile it with perspective lines and a scattering of shipping containers."

Mary Iverson has long possessed a fascination for the port of Seattle, beginning with plein air studies of its cranes and gradually evolving to her current paintings which focus more on shipping containers. Stylistically, she reduces the container terminal to a complex network of overlapping planes and construction lines in dramatic perspective. Conceptually, her work deals with issues of accumulation, industry, time and ambiguity. Iverson received an MFA in painting from the University of Washington and a BFA in Design from Cornish College of the Arts.

• Other Recent Exhibitions: Amass, September 2008; In Between (Group Show), July 2007; Contain, July 2006; Natural Selection (Group Show), June 2005

Additional Works Available