Mary Souza

 Four Time Art Party Participant       

Wedding At Sanjusangendo

Artist’s Website

www.msouza.com

Artist’s Statement

As a painter I act as a witness, actively encountering the world and gathering “what the senses see, what the heart feels, and the world suffers.”* I carry these encounters, visions and feelings with me into the solitude of the studio, where they provide fuel and a ground for discovery, yet are subsumed in a meditative practice—a practice of intercession, healing and beauty. The work begins with scribbling or rhythmic scribing of a mantra, or mark-making in response to music. My intuitive conversation with the work continues, incorporating fragments of memory and evidence of process: calligraphic gesture; excavated layers; disrupted surface and structure; things defined and obscured. In attending to particulars and connecting to the universal through the matter and gesture of paint, I seek to express the spirit and energy in the world, my subject, and myself. 

*James Hillman, ‘Practicing Beauty,’ in Uncontrollable Beauty, p.266