Mary Jane Ward

Mary Jane Ward was born in Eugene, Oregon. She now lives and works in Columbus, Ohio, where she teaches portrait, figure, and landscape painting classes at the Columbus Cultural Arts Center. Mary Jane had a nine year career as a professional dancer, dancing for classical ballet companies as well as small modern companies, individual choreographers and interdisciplinary projects. She worked with her partner Amery Kessler on a nationwide tour of his participatory artwork, Drum Casket in 2013. Mary Jane studied drawing and painting at the Grand Central Atelier in New York City, under Jacob Collins from 2012-2015. The program is a collaborative studio space, pursuing the methodology of historic ateliers to create drawing, painting and sculpture from life. Mary Jane was accepted into The Hudson River Fellowship in 2015. In 2017 she was one of three artists in residence at the Highlands Nature Sanctuary, in Bainbridge, Ohio. She is the recipient of several Artists in the Community grants from the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Mary Jane’s work has been shown at Eleventh Street Arts in New York City, The Columbus Cultural Arts Center, The Columbus Museum of Art, The Riffe Gallery (Columbus, OH), The Springfield Museum of Art (Springfield, OH), Keny Galleries (Columbus, OH), and is currently on view in Creating Identity From Place at The Southern Ohio Museum (Portsmouth, OH) and in By All Appearances, a two person show with her partner Amery Kessler at the Kuhn Fine Arts Gallery (Marion, OH).

* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 14^th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.