Welcome to my world

Perspective and peace are so much easier when you feel grounded - when you feel the most like yourself. Painting that feeling is my process, with nature as my muse.

The highest goal of my work is to draw you into an immersive moment where you experience the mood, emotion, and feeling of a piece. In doing so, I share the world I create in paint. I think of it as atmospheric abstraction.

While I don’t pretend to have a firm grasp on spirituality, I know that I feel the most connection and peace when I am close to nature, which I consider both a muse and a grounding force in my work. Hence, much of my artistic inspiration is derived there. I love bringing gifts from nature, such as feathers and shells, into my studio as reminders, when I’m not giving them to my kids, who love them as well.

I seek daily solace walking in the forest near my home. My current art practice seeks the same sense of wonder and magic I feel when I am amongst the trees with my feet on springy moss, or watching sunset transition to twilight and then a moonscape. I have come to realize that art is a form of self care which I have gifted myself as a relief to the demands of giving to others in the remaining facets of my life.

My practice explores the intersections of light, shadow, and atmosphere, evoking mood primarily with color and value. I paint a wide variety of moods - from light and ethereal, to lush and mysterious with a hint of dark enchantment. Above all, the golden thread that runs through my work is the sense of peace, tranquility, and hope.

My process begins intuitively, allowing the paint and other mediums to lead the way. I love experimenting with varying degrees of opacity and transparency and creation of depth and movement through varying viscosities and layers. The work is ultimately finished through a constant conversation between myself and the materials, refining the work through an organic editing process.

Artist Biography

Mary Claire Tillotson was born and raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where she lived in a rural setting and grew up with a pencil, paints, or a book always in hand. Her environment was an early influence, her creativity fueled by exploring the woods and foothills of the Upstate along with later explorations to more far-away places. She attended Governor’s School for the Arts and then studied fine arts at Winthrop University, focusing primarily on drawing and painting. Thereafter, she pursued law, became a trial attorney, and began raising two boys with her husband. She lived in Atlanta, Georgia, Tampa, Florida, and Chicago, Illinois with her family before returning to the South and settling in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she plans to stay.

She returned to art approximately five years ago, and after a period of exploration, found that she resonated with an abstract visual language to express her viewpoint. She paints primarily with acrylics with some elements of mixed media. Her current practice focuses on shifting light and luminosity using value and color, and visual depth through varied paint and medium viscosities. Since returning to her art practice, she has exhibited both locally and internationally and is a founding member of a global arts collective.