ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I have been drawing and painting all my life. I grew up in a little coalmining town near Charleston, West Virginia, and attended a small high school there. Fortunately, I was encouraged by a teacher who loved art and taught a short art class during our half-hour activity period. She made us all believe we could someday be artists if we tried. She suggested I go to art school, but the coalmines were worked out and closing down as I graduated from high school and my father, who was a coal miner, could not send me to college. Instead, I went to work in an office in Charleston at the ripe old age of 16. Eventually, I went to Washington, DC to work for the government, married and settled down in Maryland. I had six beautiful children to keep me busy, but when they were older, I went to work for a law firm in Washington. I did manage to take a few art classes along the way and found time occasionally to paint a little.

Over the years I have taken photographs of scenes I have seen in my travels. I kept the ones I loved most and dreamed that I would some day have time to paint all of them. That dream is now a reality. I am retired and living in Kittrell, North Carolina, and finally have time to paint. I am thoroughly enjoying the wonderful Carolina light, and those Carolina blue skies, which I like to use in my paintings.

Now my dream is that others will like my paintings as well as my children and friends do and will want to own them. My heart goes into every painting and sometimes it is very hard to part with them but there is also joy in seeing others enjoy my work.

- Mary Jane Haley

email: mhaley11@wildblue.net