Featured Artist for the Month of November & December, 2022
Email: mjsmith@rogers.com
Mary Jo Smith
Artist Bio:
Mary Jo Smith, an avid watercolour artist, is a longtime resident of West Hill, and a member of the Art Guild of Scarborough and Pine Ridge Arts Council. She is a retired teacher who enjoyed teaching art lessons for many years to students from Kindergarten to Grade 8.
Mary Jo’s inspiration for her artwork comes from her love of gardening and travel throughout Canada and Europe. Italy, and especially Tuscany, provided the source for many of her paintings. In Italy, Mary Jo discovered the technique of mounting a smaller picture and extending significant aspects of the painting onto the mat.
Her favourite subjects include flowers, forest and farm landscapes, and scenes from her travels in Europe. Mary Jo also likes to include an element of mystery to generate thought in the viewer, as in the painting “Into The Woods”. One of her titles was inspired by a passage in a Stephen King novel where he described a rural scene as “all cows and fenceposts.”
Mary Jo’s watercolour paintings have been displayed in the Art Guild of Scarborough Shows, Pine Ridge Annual Juried Art Shows, Cedar Ridge Gallery, Momiji Centre, Silverstone Gallery, Sunnybrook Hospital Art Show, Debbie’s Café, the Scarborough General Hospital Gallery, and the Clark Gallery at The Guild Park and Gardens. Mary Jo’s awards include the Lila Patton award, the Best Small Painting award, and a number of Special Merit and Honourable Mentions from The Art Guild of Scarborough shows. One of her paintings was selected for inclusion in Sunnybrook Hospital’s 2014 Christmas Cards.
Mary Jo’s paintings hang in the homes and offices of private collectors in Toronto, Georgetown, Thornhill, and Brampton; as well as Dearborn, Michigan; Los Angeles, California; Lancaster, PA; and Phoenix, Arizona. Prints of her Railway Series paintings decorate a restaurant in a converted railway station outside of Houston, Texas. Mary Jo’s paintings were featured for April and September in the Four L Graphics 2014 calendar.
Into the Woods, 32 x 39 Watercolour
Bottles and Flowers, 31 3/4 x 39 3/8 Watercolour
Sun Kissed, 22.25 x 18.25 Watercolour, Framed and Matted
Twas in the Moon of Wintertime, 35 x 18.25 Watercolour, Framed and Matted
Peonies and Tulips, 22.25 x 18.25 Watercolour,
Double Matted and Framed
Winter Dusk, 28.25 x 39 Watercolour, Framed and Matted
Cows and Fenceposts, 28 x 28 Watercolour – Double Matted and Framed
Green Gables, 12.25 x 16.5 Watercolour, Framed and Matted
If you would like more information about a painting or the artist contact the artist directly through their contact information on this page or complete the form on the Contact Us page.
Copyright notice: The copyright for these artworks resides with the artist. It is illegal for these images to be reproduced in any way or by any means, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the artist.