War and Peace, 2023
Striving for a dynamic tension between form and content in my work, I try to tap my most deeply available self to create work that strikes a wordless chord of recognition in the viewer, as I believe that the idiosyncrasy of the personal, deeply and truthfully excavated, expresses the universal. I appreciate seeing indications of the artist’s physicality, their unique fingerprint, as evidenced in brush-stroke and mark-making. Paint is kin to skin, viscera, blood, mineral, plant and stardust.
Mary DeVincentis
Mary DeVincentis is a painter whose work employs a deeply personal iconography to probe the dilemmas and mysteries of existence. Living and working in Brooklyn, NY, she paints both in her home studio and a space in Tribeca.
Her paintings present people, animals, and elements of nature as equally significant and imbued with numinosity. Drawing on a foundation in Western modernism and post-modernism, alongside her long study of classical South Asian and Tibetan art, DeVincentis’ work defies easy categorization. It is also influenced by Buddhist philosophy and psychotherapy, weaving these perspectives into a singular visual language.
DeVincentis’ recent body of work includes the Dark Matters series, which investigates the shadowy, often hidden aspects of human experience, and the Sin Eaters series, depicting society’s saints, martyrs, scapegoats, and outcasts. Her 2022 solo exhibition Walking with Ghosts at Tappeto Volante Projects, inspired by the 12th-century Persian poem The Conference of the Birds, was reviewed in Artforum (January 2023). Other solo shows in New York include Alone in This Together and Out There at M. David and Co, as well as Dwellers on the Threshold at David & Schweitzer Contemporary.
DeVincentis holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Maryland Institute College of Art and earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Printmaking from St. Martin’s College of Art in London, UK. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as Life on Mars Gallery, the International Print Center, the New York Public Library, White Columns, and the Brooklyn Museum. Her paintings are held in numerous public and private collections worldwide.