Mary Zeman maryezeman@aol.com : bio : artist statement
Up
until the age of 34, Mary Zeman had
never picked up a paintbrush. What changed her life and began her life
as an artist was a brain tumor located on the right side of her brain.
After surgery and several months of recuperation, whe walked into an art
store, purchased brushed and pain, and began her journey down the artists'
path. Despite the setbacks she experienced, she believes something inside
of her changed after the surgery. Something pulled at her making her want
to give her feelings color and bring them to life. It is this newfound
level of awareness to which she gives credit to her relatively young burst
of creative expression.
Expression is in Mary Zeman's case an understatement. Completely self-taught, she has packed a lifetime of stored emotions in just the few short years since her surgery, and has found a comforable niche for herself in the worlds of outsider art. Her artistic heroes run the gamut from Howard Finster and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec to Eric Legge and Picasso, and her eclectic work escapes the folk art label. Her paintings are colorful and sporadic, dropping the viewer into a sublime and powerful sense of color and ambiguity... but they are also something more than art for arts' sake. Each one is a new level of awareness for Mary Zeman the survivor and another integral part of Mary Zeman the Artist.
Mary Tilley Zeman was born in Jamaica, New York in 1963. She attended the University of Georgia and received a BA in journalism. She currently resides in the Atlanta area.
"I
paint because it keeps me alive!"
"I paint because I have to."
"Almost three years ago, I had surgery to remove a brain tumor from the right side of my brain. A few months after my surgery, I begged my mom to take me to an art supply store to buy some pain, brushes and canvas. I don't really know why. My husband joked that he would come hone every night and something else would be painted. I don't quite know why I feel this need to paint, but I do, so I go with it."
"I relate a lot to the main character in "The Little Prince"... when I was a child, I never painted or drew because, I didn't like what I did. I NEVER painted until 3 years ago. Now, I paint what I feel and what I see."
"I always feel like something was stirred up inside my head that made me begin to pain. The right brain controls intuitve, creative, artistic and non-verbal thought. My favorite french saying is "Rien n'est pas hazard" or "Nothing is by chance". And I really believe that is true."