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Mary Deutschman travels a short distance from her Bay Village
home to find inspiration for her landscape paintings. Scenes from
the Metropark's Emerald Necklace and other area parks fill her
canvases with vibrant colors as the sun filtering through trees
and bridges is woven into the landscape.
The exhibit, Cleveland Light and Landscape, at CWRU's Mather
Gallery from October 11 to November 8 will feature her series
on the Cleveland landscape. The free exhibit opens with an artist's
reception at 5 p.m. October 11. The gallery in Thwing Center is
open noon to 5 p.m. weekdays.
"I love the change of seasons in Cleveland," Deutschman, a Cleveland
native, said. "The Metroparks does the best job of showing them
off.
"Every season has a special kind of magic. Summer is lush
and filled with sunshine and places to explore. Autumn means miles
of spectacularly colored foliage. When trees relinquish all their
leaves, there is a time when we can see the structures of the
woods," she continued. "Next comes the snow, piled high along
the roadside or resting quietly on a picnic bench. Spring brings
on new growth and bright green."
While art has been a thread throughout most of her life, Deutschman
only began to seriously paint 11 years ago. The landscape paintings
are part of her collected work that also encompasses series on
California Landscapes, Farmlands, The West Side Market People,
Jazz Musicians and Bridges and Desert Landscapes.
Deutschman graduated from the University of Dayton and the Dayton
Art Institute where she studied commercial art with intentions
to become a fashion designer-until she learned she would need
to sew. Instead she switched to commercial art. She has worked
for the old May Company, Higbees, Halle's and for the David Kay
Catalogue. While her children were young, she freelanced.
When the artist married Daniel Deutschman and began traveling,
Paris marked the turning point in her career as she viewed the
galleries and museums of the city.
The abrupt transition from commercial to fine art was easy for
her.
"I had to work with color, shape and drawing, which is the perfect
background for painting," she said.
Deutschman studied painting at the Boston Museum School of Fine
Arts and with private teachers in Boston and Pittsburgh.
In 1993, she returned to Cleveland to live. She began exhibiting
her work, which has been shown at Lakeland Community College,
University Hospitals, the Cleveland Playhouse Gallery and the
Cleveland Artists' Foundation at Beck Center. In 1998, she was
a national finalist in the Art Calendar Magazine's Los Angeles
Art Expo. Her work hangs in more than 10 corporate offices.
Currently, work from her West Side Market series has been enlarged
and is on view at the Cleveland Hopkins Airport, providing visitors
to Cleveland with a view of one of the city's sites.
The painter also teaches adults in the Continuing Education Program
of the Cleveland Institute of Art and at the Orange Art Center.
The latest series evolved from a landscape painting class she
taught for CIA where she had her students in the parks painting.
While in the field, Deutschman paints on small canvases in acrylics
or with water colors. She prefers to work in her studio surrounded
by jazz and classical music.
To create her colorful impressionistic and fauve art images,
she first records scenes in oil pastels on index cards or with
a camera that she carries everywhere. From those images she composes
on her canvas. Recently, she has discovered manipulating images
on the computer from scanned index cards and photos to create
her rendering for a new painting.
For information, call Mather Gallery at 368-2679.
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