Mary Beth Cornelius is a non-objective abstract painter living and working in Atlanta, GA. She began her arts education in high school and college but eventually took a different career path graduating from the University of Houston with a BS in Electrical Engineering. She re-entered her artistic journey with the spirit of exploration. Instruction and residencies from multiple teachers widened her perspective and sharpened her focus. Her years of engineering design in the oil and power industries encouraged her love of line and shape. Her paintings reflect that influence today. She has developed her own distinctive voice in her exploration of shape and line. Geometric shapes offer us organization and stability; however organic shapes invoke freedom and impulse. My art explores these contradictory yet complimentary shapes. As a metaphor for our lives, for our community, for our world... we want structure and freedom, stability and changeableness, familiarity and newness!Inspiration comes first from human experience. I keep a visual journal shaped by everyday moments, extraordinary circumstances, and connections I share with others. Secondly, I am driven by a visual curiosity whether on a daily walk or while exploring unfamiliar places through travel.I make art because something in me insists on being seen—before it can be explained.At a surface level, it might start with curiosity: the pull toward line, shape, color, composition. But that’s just the doorway. Underneath, art is how I process experience—what I notice, what I feel, what doesn’t quite resolve in words. It’s a way of thinking that isn’t linear. A way of knowing that doesn’t argue, it reveals.There’s also a tension at work—structure and freedom, geometry and organic movement. Making art lets me hold both at once. It gives form to contradiction without forcing it to settle. That’s rare in everyday life.And then there’s repetition. Not in a mechanical sense, but in returning—again and again—to a question I never fully answer. Each piece is a variation, not a conclusion. That’s why it continues. If I strip everything else away—audience, outcome, even identity—what’s left is this:I make art because it’s one of the most direct ways I engage with being alive, paying attention, and shaping meaning out of experience.