MaryOlsson's Gallery

I had a career in illustration and design. A very long time ago, pre-computers, I worked with black and white product illustrations for newspaper ads, before most advertisers switched to photographs. I suppose I worked with one of the last retailers who used this kind of advertising art. I really liked it.

I worked with technical pens, permanent ink, drafting tools and a huge drawing table used by draftsmen and architects for perspective drawing. I liked finding solutions for creating halftone drawings with dot patterns and drawing techniques. I liked the quality of the renderings: the crisp, smooth lines that have the feel of technical drawings. My career would later take me into that area: the illustration of computer parts, car parts and electronic instruments, and I loved doing that kind of illustration. I obviously bring this experience into preparing my art for screen printing. I started screen printing over 30 years ago when the inks and chemicals were rather toxic. I am very happy to use safe and environmentally friendly chemicals and pigments today.

My work now is moving into the narrative and I am starting to use images that I recall as a child. I grew up in New Mexico at the cusp of the nuclear age, when fallout shelters were not unheard of, and the threat of nuclear destruction was the subject of innumerable books and films. I also grew up in a post-car town, literally one block from route 66, where the landscape of my youth was endless stretches of highway lined by endless stretches of road side joints. I am intrigued by the challenge of bringing some of this imagery into my prints.
I have lived in Sweden for the past 20 years and have a studio space at the artist’s collective Husby Konst och Hantverksförening.