Key Works

Mary Pratt’s subject was the immediate world around her, most often the objects and people within her homes in Salmonier and St. John’s, Newfoundland. She was primarily a still-life painter, but also did a series of dramatic figure studies of her friend and model Donna Meaney. She may have painted the domestic, but she responded to it viscerally. Using photographs and slides as the basis for her paintings, she tracked the effects of light on commonplace things. The works that follow begin with what she described as her first successful painting and continue through each phase of her long career.