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One
of Canada's most respected realists, Mary West Pratt is
originally from Fredericton, New Brunswick. She met her
husband, well-known painter and printmaker Christopher
Pratt, at Mount Allison University. They were married in
1957. Mary Pratt graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts
degree from Mount Allison in 1961; she and Christopher
settled in Salmonier, Newfoundland, in 1963.
Although
taking time to raise her four children, Pratt continued
to paint and had her first solo exhibition at Memorial
University Art Gallery in 1967, after her children had
reached school age. She has since exhibited at
commercial and public galleries across Canada, and is
included in many prestigious collections. Her first
nationally touring solo exhibition was organized by the
London Regional Art Gallery in 1981.
Known
for her perceptive use of light, Pratt's subject matter
is mainly still lifes of domestic objects and the female
figure. Her images take on a dimension of reality that
is based on photographic references but seems super-real
in its detail and saturated colour. The 1995 book The
Substance of Light is an analysis of her work by Tom
Smart of The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, which organized a
nationally touring retrospective of her paintings and
multimedia drawings in the same year.
Pratt has been a very active member of the arts
community, receiving honorary degrees from Memorial
University, Dalhousie University, University of Toronto
and St. Thomas University. She was a member of the
Applebaum-Herbert Federal Cultural Review Committee in
1981 and in 1985 chaired a committee to advise on the
creation of the School of Fine Arts at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. Pratt
was named Companion of the Order of Canada in 1996. She
is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the
Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador.
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