ArtistsNetwork.com 27Meet the Artist
Mary Whyte
(marywhyte.com) was
the recipient of the
Portrait Society of
America’s Gold Medal
in 2016, the society’s
highest achievement.
She was also the
recipient of the
Elizabeth O’Neill Verner
Award, the highest honor given to an artist
in South Carolina. Her groundbreaking
exhibition, “Working South,” was featured
on “CBS Sunday Morning,” and traveled to
museums throughout the South. Whyte was
an exhibitor and presenter at the Foreign
Countries International Watercolour Summit
in Nanning, China. Her paintings are shown
in major exhibitions and collected
nationally and internationally. She’s the
author of six books on her life and art
instruction, and also the subject of a
biography by curator and historian Martha
R. Severens, entitled More Than a Likeness,
The Enduring Art of Mary Whyte. For
workshop information, contact her agent
and manager at [email protected].the relationship between the work the man did and the work his
dog did,” she says, “so I balanced the two subjects in my composi-
tion by connecting them with bales of straw. I was careful about
adding detail to the straw, dissolving the rest, which is my way of
directing the eye and telling the viewer what’s important and
where to linger.”
Whyte created contrast behind the man’s head to emphasize the
subject further, and removed the real-life trees and hills in the back-
ground. To paint the snow flurries, she fl icked drops of water onto
the paint while the sky area was still wet. “One thing that can con-
tribute to a successful painting,” says Whyte, “is having a dominant
color or color family. I call this a ‘mother’ color. Here, I wanted to
push the dominant warms of my palette more into neutrals to
achieve the sense of light when the sky is that milky white color.”
Often asked to describe the moment when a painting is fi nished,
Whyte responds, “It’s when I know that there’s nothing I can add
that will further the concept or the emotion of the painting.
Therefore, a sketch can be ‘complete’ or a very detailed painting can
be ‘complete.’ We must remember that painting is an invention. As
artists, we have two realities: the reality of what was there and our
own reality, which is our own world. Our paintings invite the viewer
into our world—into what we saw and what we felt.” WARobert K. Carsten (robertcarsten.com) is a multimedia artist, writer
andexhibitions juror. He teaches workshops in the U.S. and abroad.Flurries (watercolor on paper, 23x31)PHOTO BY JACK ALTERMAN