Artist: Mary Gilkerson | Location: Columbia, SC
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Artist: Mary Gilkerson | Location: Columbia, SC
Columbia, SC
Mary Bentz Gilkerson is an artist who uses color and light to connect people to the experience of place. Gilkerson notes, “For the last five years I have been making a small painting almost every day inspired by the landscapes I travel through, mainly near the roads and highways around Columbia, SC, especially Lower Richland. I’m drawn to the ordinary spaces we move through, especially ones that are within view from the road, a strange intersection of nature and culture. We move so fast that we don’t take time to observe the world around us in the way that people did before modern transportation and technology came along. My work seeks to focus on the shifting patterns of light and color that tell us what time of day and season it is, to notice the small and subtle as well as the large and grand.”
Gilkerson holds an MFA in drawing and painting from the University of South Carolina. A native South Carolinian, she lives and works in her Columbia studio after retiring as a professor of art at Columbia College. She has received grants from the S.C. Arts Commission and the Cultural Council of Richland and Lexington Counties in addition to having been selected as a Southern Arts Federation Fellowship Finalist. Her work is in the permanent collections of McKissick Museum, Palmetto Health, Morris Communications Company, and Seibels Bruce Group, among others.