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Missionary Mary Proctor June 2006 ______________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Mary Proctor was born in Tallahassee Florida in 1960. Her early life was hard. She doesn't like to talk about how difficult it was growing up poor outside the city. "I just praise God because of my art.", she says. When Mary was 32, her beloved Grandmother and her aunt and uncle were killed in a house fire. After a year of grieving and crying , she prayed under this oak tree on the property of her NOAH'S ARK FLEA MARKET.
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The plywood painting of Christ at the foot of the tree has weathered so much over the years, it has nearly become part of the tree. " 'My grandmother really was the one who raised me, and my aunt and uncle were always there, and I was praying then to figure out her death, figure out why such things happen to such good people. And then I felt like I could hear my grandfather's voice, saying "God will show you the way."' In January 1995, Mary decided to go on a fast and confront the meaning of her loss. She retired to her back yard, under an old oak tree, to drink only water and spend her days reading the Bible and meditating. On the thirtieth day of her fast, she had a vision of 'blinding light, brighter than the sun.' It was different 'than any earthly light. It was shining just for me, surrounding me,' she said. A voice told her to go to an outbuilding on her property and get a door, some paint and a brush. At the building, Mary found a door and some blue paint. She returned to the oak tree where she had been meditating and the voice told her to paint the door. The instructions, Mary says, got more specific." Steve Kistulentz/Raw Vision Mary's inspiration was so compelling that within a year she was making headlines in mainstream art. First discovered by Claude Stephens, she had her first one-woman show at Railroad Square in Tallahassee. Shortly after, Tricia Collins discovered Mary's paintings of her grandmother on doors and opened a one woman show for her at TRICIA COLLINS GRAND SALON in New York. Raw Vision Magazine, a seminal resource on Outsider Art, featured Missionary Mary Proctor in Volume 29. Her image on the the cover: a woman with her head thrown back singing. She has been featured in many other fine publications and represented in many collections both here and abroad. http://www.rawvision.com/back/proctor/proctor.html Mary was invited to exhibit at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe ('The Genre Formerly Known as Outsider: Eight Extraordinary Artists.') 'I saw in Mary's work an energy, a melding of Anglo- and African-American traditions, all of it coming together in a unique way. And it had an authenticity to it that is unfortunately sometimes lacking in work I see elsewhere.' Annie Carlano, Curator of American and European Collections At 48, Mary Proctor works prolifically and travels constantly. Her husband Tyrone has retired after 25 years as a firefighter and gets Mary and her work to shows all over the southeast. Her flea market has changed names. Now it is known as the American Folk Art Museum and Gallery. This just barely begins to tell about Mary Proctor. This list of collections and exhibits does not come near representing all of Mary's accomplishments. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Collections and Featured Exhibitions Smithsonian: Anacosta Contemporary Folk Art American Visionary Art
Museum, Baltimore, Maryland Zora Neale Hurston Museum,
Eatonville, Florida Tricia Collins-Grand Salon,
New York, New York “Mary L. Proctor:
The Door Paintings” Mennello Museum of American Folk Art The Coca Cola Corporation Raw Vision (COVER) Southern Living (Feature) Mary is a featured artist in the House of Blues Folk Art Festival in Orlando every year. She opened a show at the Smithsonian in Feb. '05 and had already been included in the magazine. ____________________________________________________________________________________ RESOURCES Smithsonian Contemporary Folk Art Intuit Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
For Information about all of the Missionary Mary Proctor work we represent: _________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Eileen West Gallery P O Box 4715 Seaside Florida 32459 850.231-2133 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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