Mary Culbertson Stark

Artist

Known in the Pittsburgh region for her compelling images ad- dressing life from the female perspective; Mary Culbertson-Stark has been creating visual narratives for almost four decades.
A graduate of the University of South Carolina and the University of Pittsburgh, Mary credits early theater training at the Pittsburgh Play- house as setting a solid stage for her individual style of expression. Artfully recreating stories and observations from her personal life and the lives of those she encounters; Mary embodies seemingly simple images of objects, women and landscape with a mystical, emotive spirit. Her image making process is rooted in drawing which she ex- pands upon with an application of mixed media overlays to form surfaces that are ethereal and enigmatic.
Included among the many subjects her work has addressed over the years are: the soul as illustrated through drawings of lingerie and dresses, the loss of a child using embossed book pages, a memoir of western landscape using postcards sent to herself, healing tomes generated from working with patients in a holistic medicine practice, boats and shoes as references to traversing life’s transitions, umbrellas as metaphors for shelter, and most recently, Renaissance iconography in the address of the losses incurred during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mary has been honored with many awards of excellence throughout her career. She was the recipient of three Skidmore College Art Fellowships for Painting and Drawing, an Associated Artists of Pittsburgh grant to engage at risk adolescents in the skills of art entrepreneurship, and has been honored by the Pennsylvania House and Senate for her work in arts education. Mary has also served in many capacities for a variety of art constituencies in the Pittsburgh area. These include Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Watercolor Society, Pittsburgh Fund for Arts Education, Master Visual Artists of Pittsburgh and The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. She taught art for 35 years in the Bethel Park School District, additionally facilitating workshops at CCAC, Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Mellon University Saturday Program and Gannon University. Mary has donated her art and worked on behalf of a number of charitable organizations in Pittsburgh to further raise awareness of their missions.
Prolific and dedicated; Mary has presented 38 solo exhibitions since 1984. Her most recent solo was at Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Gallery in June 2022. She has also exhibited at The Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, The Andy Warhol Museum, University of Pittsburgh, Indiana University, Slippery Rock University, Seton Hill University, Duquesne University, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, and The State Museum of Pennsylvania. Her work is included in over 375 private and corporate collections worldwide.