Gallery Exhibit featuring works by Mary Albyn

Mary grew up in Ohio with a colorful family that boasted some creativity, along with a lot of unstructured and undisciplined freedom. She had 3 sisters, all born within 1.5 years of each other and a much younger brother. Her Mom was a socialite and her dad, a horticulturalist who spent much time at his nursery growing and selling plants, trees, and rhododendrons. In early life, her backyard was his 100-acre nursery.

Mary’s Great Aunt was a famous artist who illustrated children’s books and the weekly comic in My Weekly Reader. If anyone remembers the small mouse on the last page of the Reader, that was Mary Sherwood Wright Jones’s signature.

Living in Rhode Island in the late 70’s, Mary took lessons in oil painting at Don’s Art Shop in Warren, a mecca for hippies and other wayward souls. Don was very Bohemian and lessons were a lot of fun with minimal structure.

After moving to Vermont in the early 80’s, she continued to study oil painting, taking lessons with Barbara Frey at the SVAC. However, she did not have much time to paint as she owned the Magic Sleigh Christmas store and had 2 daughters.

She happily entered single parenthood when the girls were 2 and 7 years old, and returned to her profession of Occupational Therapy, which she had studied at UNH. Her favorite areas of practice were Hand Therapy, school OT, and VNA home care. She dabbled in pastels for a while, taking lessons with Robert Carston. Always fearful of watercolors after the forgiveness of working with oils, 10 years ago she braved a watercolor class with Lynn Pratt, a photo-real watercolorist from Pawlet, who is becoming world famous.

Always a lover of frogs and the challenge of catching them, her latest interest has been finding a picture of a frog and taking the challenge of replicating it. She spends time every day, as she says, “wasting time, wasting paint”, as well as playing with her puppy, knitting, and playing the piano. Retirement is nice! She married the wonderful Peter Palmer 8 years ago and they have a great life together.