Mary Grant Don’t Know Much About History

As the UK was about to go into another lockdown in January 2021, landscape artist Mary Grant’s son came up with the idea that she should do a painting every single day. She began creating works which summed up her feelings about the day, then posting them on Instagram around nine o’clock at night. Over eighteen months and 550 paintings later, she is still going strong. Twenty Two of these paintings feature in her new exhibition, ‘Don’t Know Much About History’. Her work is firmly rooted within the English landscape tradition, but offers something new, with scenes of rural skies, woods and paths that are both familiar and unfamiliar.

Grant says of her project to paint every day: “To be honest I just can’t stop painting. It was something to get me through a tricky time. I like to gather up how I feel about the day. The wonderful thing is you get this immediate response from your Instagram audience. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

The title of the exhibition is inspired by a line from the Sam Cooke song ‘What A Wonderful World’, but it is also a reference to Grant’s admiration of older paintings such as the work of the nineteenth century English American painter Thomas Cole, who was known for his romantic portrayal of the American wilderness.

After studying art at Kingston University from 1991 to 1994, Grant has been an Artist in Residence at a number of different locations. For eleven years she had a studio at Great Western Studios in Westbourne Park, West London, before moving to Sussex in 2012. Her work has featured in numerous shows and art fairs around Europe and in New York.

Grant moved to a new home in rural Sussex last year, where she lives between a common where Exmoor ponies graze, and fields where cattle roam. The landscape where she walks everyday inspires her work, but while she might start with a real scene, in the process of painting it can become something else.

“They may start off with a particular path and by the time I’ve played around with them and messed around with different layers and glazes, they may not necessarily represent that, so they are left a little bit open,” she says.

She starts in acrylic to build up the layers, then switches over to oils for figuration, balancing working within a tradition with pushing the boundaries. The paintings in this exhibition have quite generic titles such as The Bathers, The Swimmers, The Picnic, The Couple, such as may have been found in the work of French impressionists. But alongside this sense of the past are chinks of bright colour.

She says: “I’m inspired by positivity. My work has become lighter in colour, my palette has changed, it is brighter. My work used to be more atmospheric and darker. I’m not brave enough to paint a rainbow, they’re far too difficult but there are little shots of optimism. It’s supposed to be about love in all its guises. Hopefully that will come across.”

Exhibition 30th July - 18th Sept 2022