In 1990 I met my friend Mary in a seminar in Monterey, California, on September 2nd.  We had both enrolled in the seminar with the idea of quitting smoking.  I quit first.  Mary was  soon a quitter as well.   It was a good year.  I met my husband at about the same time. 

We had lunch fairly regularly, a really a wise, funny conversationalist is she, and the first time she had a show, I went to see her work.  Needless to say, I loved her even more and we are lifelong friends.  When we were remodelling the law offices where I worked I commissioned a painting.  A couple of months later, Mary brought the painting in, and I was in love with it.  Soon after, I was attacked by people I worked with, one even being so rude as to tell me to "get that fucking ugly thing out of here."  It was an excruciating experience.  I called Mary and told her it wasn't going to work out with the law firm, so I asked her, would she be willing to take payments so that I could buy it personally.  And so a good deal began that has continued to this day.  The first painting hangs in our dining room today.

Over the following months after I had the set-to with some of the partners in the law firm, I was invited to visit their homes for parties or events.  It was then that I discovered that none of them had any original art in their homes.  The had some pretentious prints, that will have by now gone out of style, and which they must have purchased at a decorator's store.  Not one thing was original.  I couldn't imagine a life where one hacked ones way through undergraduate school and then law school that didn't have art, music, literature.  I thought it was part of living a well-educated life.  That's what I wanted for myself, and I guess it was the first time I realized that I was projecting what I thought a good life was upon my fellow legal eagles.  I was absolutely shocked to find out how wrong I was, and when I caught my breath from the shock of that realization, I began to realize there was something about me that was special in a way I hadn't fully appreciated. 

This is a painting I bought from Mary about 5 years ago.  I have been buying her paintings with some regularity since 1990.  Below is a picture of it where it lives over the writing table in my library.

 Across the room is our latest painting.  It might take us a couple years to pay for it.

Living with art changes who we are.  People who visit our home always comment about how peaceful it is here.  I think they are feeling Mary's peace too.   

Her husband, Bill Bailey,  is a wonderful videographer who has worked for major network television stations and he created a video that shows this last painting above  in a gallery show at Blue Horse Gallery located in Bellingham, Washington, where we all live now.

You can see the video he created at www.marypaints.com.  It shows Mary's work and also has an interview.