Mary Gillett

All Mary’s images are made using the etching, open bite, sugarlift and aquatint processes in varying degrees. More than often, making use of the serendipity of reactions between grease and water and the magic of the burnisher and the scraper as drawing tools are key features of the work.

The language of traditional etching has unique eloquence for Mary. Interweaving this alchemical process with the layers and symbols inherent in the landscape feels to her the most robust way of exploring a complex world of overwhelming emotions. Her work has been described as conveying “powerful, uncompromising landscapes” pervaded by a “stern lyricism which speaks beyond place and season”. 

She loves the viscerality of the contact with materials; her etching plates look as if they might have been eroded by the elements themselves. They have been furrowed, corroded, scraped, burnished until their history is symbolic of the very subject that confronts her.

Depending on how hard she wants the viewer to work towards a conclusion, she likes to leave the images open to conjecture.  She finds there is nothing more rewarding than discovering she has led the viewer through a portal to where they recognise, at a visceral level, the layers of experience through which the piece evolved.