Geneva Lake Art Association

GLAA Volunteer of the Month: M'Lou McEneely

Mary McEneely is our May GLAA Volunteer of the Month. Along with being the Web Master for the GLAA website, teaching new Members Plus members how to add their images to the website, organizing workshops, managing the GLAA

iVolunteer.com gallery-sitting site and filtering GLAA emails, M’Lou, as she likes to be called, has also donated a new banner to advertise monthly guest speakers, and is in the process of setting up a June members luncheon.

Artist Mary McEneely has returned to oil and pastel painting after a long hiatus.  She felt the need to return to painting as a means of expressing her feelings and emotions. "Through painting I celebrate the good times and it helps me through the tough times. I dream about painting at night!

“My primary focus as an artist is on figure painting. When I paint, the canvas becomes a looking glass into the lives, real or imagined, of my subjects. My subjects are usually family and friends and I enjoy establishing a bridge from the past to the present with them as I paint. Oil paint provides an intimacy with my canvas and gives me time while I'm painting to think about “my people”. I work from photographs, old and new, as well as from life, and find myself looking back on peoples lives who, perhaps, lived in a different era and have “conversations” with them in the moment. Knowing how some of their histories have unfolded, the painting “speaks” to me with the story of their lives. In some cases, their histories lie ahead of them and I am mindful of what they must be dreaming about for their futures. Often, I feel like I climb inside the canvas and can see what they see looking out of the painting at the viewer. I love doing portraiture as well as "alla prima" painting. Capturing the subjects doing things that they do every day is my favorite way to paint. I have been studying for many years with local artist, Alice White. She is my "mentor and inspiration". John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Vilhelm Hammershoi, George Bellows, James MacNeill Whistler, and the black/white drawings of Georges Seurat are only a few on a long list of masters who inspire me. Following a workshop with artist, William Schneider, I recently have been attempting "Master Studies" of some of my favorite paintings”.

A graduate of Marycrest College, Davenport, Iowa, Mary resides in Lake Geneva, with her family. Her work may be viewed on the GLAA website, www.genevalakeart.org and on her website, www.marymceneely.com. and on her blog, www.marymceneely.blogspot.com. Mary welcomes commissions.