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Mary H. Phelan
About the Artist:
Mary Phelan, chair of the Life Drawing and Foundations Departments, American Academy of Art, Chicago,is an award-winning artist whose paintings and drawings have been exhibited widely in the Midwest, as well as in New York and Mexico. Several museums and galleries have featured one-woman shows of her works, which include oils, ink, and collage.
Among her works are numerous commissioned portraits, many of which hang in public and private collections including those of the University of Illinois and the Library of Congress. Illustration work includes drawings for The Urban Tree Book (Times Books/Random House, 2000), and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago. Other clients include The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, The Chicago Tribune, Playboy Magazine, and American Library Association. She has also served as judge and juror for art exhibitions,conducted critique-workshops, and addressed art organizations as guest speaker.
Listed in Who's Who in America, she is a graduate of the American Academy of Art and Northeastern Illinois University. Her interests include tennis, gardening, yoga, and Ayurvedic nutrition.
More About the Artist and Her Work:
FINE ART:
Ms. Phelan's fine art deals with landscape themes in representational as well as abstract motifs. Earlier works, mostly in oil, portray interpretive settings inspired by several trips to Ireland. The art critic Steve Mannheimer said of her work,"She handles the paint well, with a sensitive eye to those nuances of surface and color that produce mood. Moreover, Phelan has an ear, as it were, to the Celtic melody of the landscape, hearing the lightly mournful harmonies of sky, earth, and water" (Indianapolis Star, Jan. 27, 1991).
During the 1990s, Ms. Phelan's landscapes became increasingly abstract and incorporated techniques of printmaking, collage, and mixed media. In The New York Times(Feb. 2, 1997), Helen Harrison said of one of Ms. Phelan's abstract works,"it recalls the cryptic diagrams of Paul Klee, with their combination of whimsical and slightly sinister linearity."
In 1998 she received the Curatorial Committee's Special Mention for Excellence from the Stage Gallery, New York.
Recent work (since 2000) explores Asian principles of form as meaning, particularly in terms of urban landscapes, including fugitive structures, urban trees and other icons of neighborhood experience.
PORTRAITURE:
Ms. Phelan has executed portrait commissions throughout her art career. One of her recent clients is Robert Morris College, Chicago, for whom she has been doing a series of portraits commemorating trusteees and all past presidents.Other works hang at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Pharmacy, the University of Illinois (Urbana) Graduate Library, the Library of Congress, and other institutions and private collections.
ILLUSTRATION:
In addition to her work on The Urban Tree Book, Ms. Phelan has illustrated several books for The Chicago Review Press, The Crossing Press, and American Library Association Editions in the areas of health, cooking, and biography.
She has done extensive work for the Illinois chapter of the Nature Conservancy, from which she received an outstanding achievement award in 1992. "Mary has a real commitment to the cause of preserving and protecting natural areas in Illinois," said Al Pyott, then Illinois director of the Nature Conservancy. "Her work indoors is helping us save what's outdoors."
In 1999 Ms. Phelan completed a series of illustrations for permanent display at the new Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago's Lincoln Park.
Resume:
ACADEMIC:
Chairperson, Life Drawing Dept., American Academy of Art, Chicago, 1989 --
Chairperson, Foundations Dept., 2005 --
SOLO EXHIBITS:
2006 * "Seen in Place," State St. Gallery, Robert Morris College, Chicago, IL
2004 * "What Flows Beneath," Bell Gallery, Chicago, IL
1996 * Renner Gallery, Blackburn University, Carlinville, IL
1995 *"Place Markers," Almquist Gallery, Winnetka, IL
1993 * Freeport Art Museum, Freeport, IL
1993 * Irish American Heritage Center, Chicago, IL
1991 * Sulzer Regional Library, Chicago, IL
1991 * "The Color of Celtic," Beverly Art Center, Chicago, IL
1990 * Form & Function Gallery, Chicago, IL
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITS:
2002 * "Chicago, Art in the City," Bell Studio, Chicago
2000 * "Valdosta Works on Paper XII, Valdosta, GA
1997 * "Abstraction ‘97," Stage Gallery, Merrick, NY
1997 * "Bi-State Competition," Davenport Museum of Art, Davenport, IA
1997 * "Neolandscape," Union Street Gallery, Chicago Heights, IL
1994 * Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, Chicago, IL
1992 * "16th Harper College National Print & Drawing Exhibit," Palatine, IL
1991 * "Fendig, Forsythe & Phelan," Wm. Engle Gallery, Indianapolis, IN
1991 * "8th Annual Works on Paper Exhibit," Elgin Community College, Elgin, IL
1991 * "Inspired in the Midwest," Freeport Art Museum, Freeport, IL
1991 * "Artists and the American Yard," Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI
SELECTED COLLECTIONS & COMMISSIONS:
* U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins and Diane Collins,
architect. Somers, NY, 2003
* Robert Morris College, Chicago, IL 1998 -2004
* University of Illinois, Chicago, IL 1995
* American Library Association, Chicago, 1995
* Gottlieb Hospital, Northlake, IL 1994 & 1991
* Mercy Hospital, Janesville, WI 1993
* Irish American Heritage Center Museum, Chicago, 1993
* Elgin Community College, Elgin, IL 1991
* Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, 1989
* University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 1988
* Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1983
GRANTS & AWARDS:
Purchase Award, Elgin Community College, IL 1991
Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Montreal, Canada 1976 & 1977
EDUCATION:
University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 1971-72
AFA, American Academy of Art, Chicago, 1973-77
BA, Northeastern University, Chicago, 1985-86
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987
e-mail : mhphel@aol.com
See more works on these sites:
Chicago Artists Coalition (enter "Phelan" in "galleries" line)
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Below (at low resolution), "Spring Thaw" (oil, 2003); "The Beauty Bunker" (oil, 2003); "Urban Forest" (oil, 2002); "First Light" (oil, 2004). Earlier works: rural landscape, oil; abstract landscape, mixed media; portrait of woman, pastel; portrait of man, oil.
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Mary H. Phelan
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