About Mary Jane Q Cross

Born in 1951 Mary Jane Q. Cross received her formal training at the Worcester Art Museum, in 1970 to 1973 in a time of expressionism. Followed by workshops with Daniel Green and mentoring with Fran Hoyt (student of Vincent Dumond), Mary Jane designed her own curriculum based on the Atelier System, to gain the tools necessary to make her art speak with historic purity, and her own unique voice.

Awards accumulated for the artist from early years on the outdoor festival circuit, where 30,000 a year regularly followed her career. She has membership and awards from American Artists Professional League, Allied Artists of America, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe club, Oil Portrait Society of America, Exhibits with Oil Painters of America 2006, 2008, 2009 and other notable organizations.

Mary Jane Q Cross paints women because, in God’s world, it was not good for man to be alone. In a growingly faithless culture, she observed that there is a slow awakening to the fact that American modernist artwork has reflected its lack of attractiveness. It may take a look at God to be reminded of how captivating the United States is. She says, “On the adventures In the earliest part of our country, women brought china tea cups into the wilderness, put flowers on the table, they brought a calm civility to an untamed place and that place became more beautiful by their presence. They were women of beauty in the adventure of their lives.”

In both paint and in women, Mary Jane says, “beauty is not, in the popular phrase, in the eye of the beholder. Real beauty speaks, invites, is soul piercing and it nourishes. Beauty comforts, it inspires, it is transcendent, eventually drawing us to look at God and His Creation. To be transformed to the place of speechless longing and contentment.

Beauty is deeper than skin and deeper than bone and pursued by Mary Jane as a treasure. Q. Cross’s world is filtered through an open, unveiled heart, as a painter and as a woman.

As a result, her impassioned paintings continue to have an appeal to a broad audience, whether the seasoned art aficionado or new viewers to her art, whether male or female, to those who are purchasing their first piece of art, then to Collectors with the established Museum quality collections. Many of her collectors own several pieces.  Her loyal following approves as she strives to preserve art of intense integrity. The artist’s work has been in over 135 exhibitions in the last 10 years. Her work is regularly before the public as admirers await each new work.

In addition Mary Jane is currently the subject of a documentary about conquering as an artist when challenged with relearning her craft; after being struck with a devastating permanent right sided tremor,  after a 1992 solo Museum Mural exhibition at the biblical Museum in Dallas Texas. Her flourishing portrait, biblical murals career, and classical workshop teaching career, came to an abrupt end.  She has succeeded remarkably to go on to learn to paint with both her fingers and prosthetic devices invented by the artist. Mary Jane says of the situation that “she felt like a live dead artist.” Coping with what you cannot change has given her figure paintings a strength and truth that speaks to real people, in real life. It continues to be an inspiring story of a pioneering spirit.

An accomplished poet, her recently published “Poems of a Painter, Paintings of a Prayer" is in its second printing. It is an added dimension illustrating a commitment to God and her vocation as a well trained, versatile artist.

With paintings of raw spiritual emotion, Mary Jane is a virtuoso performer in paint, who tells a compelling story and engages the viewer. With her deep command of subtle color, value and drawing, people ask about the incredible realness of all her models. They want to live in Mary Jane’s world in the quiet country that is getting lost to over development and the haste of life.

A Collector has said, “Owning a Cross painting is a way to surround myself and my family with an artistic peace that will still be sound for many years to come.”

“It seems like Mary Jane has taken the hearts of these young girls and painted them for all to see, ‘Sing Over me’ sings for me.  Ken Day

“Her work makes me remember a perfect feeling.”  Terri S.

Mary Jane Q Cross's work is signed with a thumbprint made into a Q.

Mary Jane Q. Cross

www.q-cross.com

www.maryjaneqcross.com

qcross@earthlink.net