Time Is On Your Side by Mary Daudelin Opens In Art Gallery

My name is Mary Daudelin and I'm a painter. Not an artist – but a painter. If you were to meet me on the street and ask me, “Who are you?”, I would be more apt to answer you, “Math major and computer geek”. That's how I see myself. That's who I am inherently.

I'll be turning 60 this year and didn't start painting until my 40's. I had decided to enroll my daughter into Chris Didomizio's Old World Art class for some extracurricular activity to keep her busy. She said the only way she was going was if I went with her. Chris, being the person that he is, said I could stay with her as long as I did the exercises along with everyone else. So I bought some pencils and pastels and thought, “only for my daughter would I do this – I haven't an artistic bone in this body”.

Well, the way Chris teaches evidently caught hold of me, because when my daughter dropped out six weeks later, I was hooked and have been coloring, drawing, painting and occasionally water-coloring off and on ever since. He opened a whole new world to me that I didn't know existed. I had my first art show at Smyrna Library in the late 90's. I showed what I had at the time of my pencils and pastels. He strong-armed me into the oils class one day and I went kicking and screaming to Binder's to get the tubes/brushes/canvases he had on his list. I really didn't want to paint in oils – they scared me – and I loved pencils and pastels – you could erase the mistakes. Oh well, he knew best and I fell in love with oils and the Old World Master's techniques w/glazing that he taught us.

Anyway – he taught us using the Masters' as example. If we could learn to reproduce or get a feel as to what they had done, then it couldn't do anything but help us create better pictures of our own. I'm just now getting to where I paint what I want. The mistakes that you see here are all mine - the ones that work and you really like are probably the ones that follow the rules and the techniques that Chris has taught me . . .

Painting has been a life saver these past years – I've gone from working full-time for various communication's companies, getting my Master's overseas, being 'retired' when the economy took its dip, taking care of a mother through cancer treatments and then Alzheimer's, going through a recurrence of cancer myself, losing my two dogs of 16 years and, blessedly, having a new grand-baby! Being able to paint has seen me through these times and has transported me to a different place when I needed to escape.

I hope you enjoy them. If you want me to paint you up anything, give me a call. I tend to paint and give away to family and friends – but you can always become a friend if you can't afford the prices. Or better yet, learn how to paint yourself. Chris still is teaching after all these years, albeit over in Dunwoody and no longer in Vinings.I'll let you know if I ever get to the stage that I consider myself an artist - if that day ever comes, you'll be able to find me here at the library, yet again.