Mary Davidson is a Scottish artist whose home studio is situated just outside Edinburgh. Over the past 24 years she has been successful in having her work accepted into many prestigious public exhibitions - i.e. the Royal Glasgow Institute (RGI), the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW) and the Laing Exhibition. She has exhibited in group exhibitions throughout the UK, the South of France and in New York. She has also had many solo shows.

Mary Davidson was born in Dundee, lived in Australia for a few years as a child, and has been living and working in the Glasgow and Edinburgh areas since 1986.

In 1995 Mary was elected an artist member of the Paisley Art Institute and the following year was accepted into the Glasgow Society of Women Artists.

Her work is in numerous private and public collections including Vanity Fair in New York; the Duke of Bedford collection; Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen; East Dunbartonshire Council and Cala Homes.

 

Mary Davidson says: 
"The main focus of my work is light and its effect on objects. I seem to be constantly striving to capture it and describe it in paint. All sorts of subjects inspire me, however I always seem to come back to tabletops with jugs of big Oriental Poppies, Sunflowers or Roses.

Creating a looseness of brushwork that hopefully suggests rather than dictates a scene, is crucial to the finished piece. I like to play with the boundaries, making abstract marks that will work together to create a recognisable image that makes sense to the viewer. I am not trying to achieve pure representation. I paint what I admire and what excites me visually.  I love the challenge of translating into paint.  For me the real excitement builds once the imagination takes over and the paint begins to work for me.  I love the feel and the smell of the paint.

Plockton in Wester Ross and the islands of Mull and Iona are areas where I have returned to on many occasions and from where a lot of inspiration comes. I love their remoteness and their quality of light and try to reflect this in my work. Iona is a special place for me and is an unlimited source of subject matter. I will always return. 

I work in oils using a range of palette knives and brushes (mostly large flats and filberts which allow me to keep it loose). I tend to use anything to apply the paint that makes an interesting mark, even fingers come in handy when moving the paint around! 

The paints I use are artist quality permanent pigments.

I feel there is still so much I need to learn about painting - I hope I never stop learning."