Mary Hanson spent her childhood on a sheep and wheat farm near a dry and dusty little town in the Australian outback. With few playmates and no distractions from the outside world, she absorbed the colors and lines within the boundaries of her horizons. A theme of isolation marks her enduring relationship with that stark landscape and each piece is infused with a sense of colour unique to those early experiences.Although a career in music brought her to North America, Mary’s strength and interest in visual art eventually lead to work in film and interior design. In the 90’s she apprenticed with a decorative artist who specialized in the traditional art of gilding. Many years were spent applying metallic leaf to ceilings, walls, frames, and furniture, before Mary was drawn back to her early love of painting. Her affinity for the shiny metal foil began to show itself in her work as little bits of silver and gold crept into the paintings and soon took over to become by far the main ingredient.Mary Hanson lives in Toronto, Canada and has exhibited in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal as well as Madison Wisconsin, Miami Beach Florida and Sydney Australia. Mary has an ongoing body of work at the Loft Gallery in Clarksburg, Ontario. Artist StatementI have always been captivated by the glow of precious metals so it’s no surprise that my medium is metallic leaf. As a child, I admired the beautiful iridescent shine on the backs of beetles who visited us like winged jewels on hot summer nights. I collected the shiny gold and coloured foil wrappers from chocolate and candies and kept them in a special box together with the ‘silver linings’ from abandoned cigarette packets. Years later, as a decorative artist I found my niche in the traditional art of gilding, working with silver, gold and copper leaf. I became very familiar with the nuances of the fragile foil and happily discovered along the way that some of my ‘mistakes’ could now be employed as techniques.A great deal of my imagery is formed in the metal by etching with acids. Then it’s shaped and developed by sanding and scratching with various tools. The finish coat of resin adds depth and richness and accentuates details in the leaf. I think my color sense comes from an upbringing in outback Australia where I gazed on vast horizons of golden wheat and red earth. The silver water was mostly a mirage and merely a yearning.I like to think of my landscapes as places that you can never quite get to. Like the residual feeling from a half remembered dream, it’s a place of serenity and comfort but there’s an underlying hint of trepidation. Sometimes these places can be inhabited by strange beings and some still hold distant memories of forgotten lives.