The following information was provided by the artist unless otherwise noted.

Mary Anne Watson was born and grew up in a small town in Southern Ontario. She graduated in 1945 from the University of Toronto, School of Nursing with diplomas in Public Health and General Nursing. In 1946 she married a journalist in Timmons, Ontario where she was working as a public health nurse. They spent the next 10 years traveling across Canada, working in various towns and cities.

With no children in sight, Mary Anne gave up Public Health nursing in 1956 to attend the Ontario College of Art, the Fine Art division. After graduation in 1959, she was asked to come back for a post-graduate year as an assistant in the Graphic Shop where she continued to work on etching with artist/teacher Fred Hagan. She showed her etchings in shows with the Graphic Society and the Society of Canadian Painter/Etchers and won several awards.

In 1967, Mary Anne and her husband moved to New York City. In New York, she worked at the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop on 16th Street which was an outgrowth of the Stanley Hayter workshop of the war years. In this connection her work was shown and sold through the Weyhe Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art lending service and the Knox Albright Gallery lending service in Buffalo.

After 20 years of etching, she turned to acrylic and watercolours to paint some of the fantasies she etched previously and to carry them further. Her aim in doing this was to search for an inner reality Ð first done in a psycho/analytical way which led in turn to a spiritual inner search. She has read a good deal of the works of Carl Jung and other Jungian writers and finds their ideas relevant to her work. In the words of Paul Klee, she goes for a walk with a line and from this line drawing develops her automatic paintings which have an inner meaning for her and now are developing many of the archetypes known to the female psyche.

Museums/Collections

Zimmerli Art Gallery, Rutgers University, NJ
National Art Gallery, Ottawa, Canada
University of Toronto Library, Canada

 

Galleries/Shows

Wehye Gallery, NY
Gallery Pascal, Toronto, Canada
Audubon Artists, NY

 

Awards and Foundations

C.W. Jeffries Award, Toronto, Canada

W.E. Bower Award, Salmagundi Club, NY
Gayner Award, NAWA

 

Educational Institutions

Ontario College of Art, Canada
New York University

 

Professional Affiliations

National Association of Women Artists
Burr Artists, NY
National League of American Pen Women

 

Reviews and Publications

Who's Who in American Art

Regina Stewart, Executive Director