Mary Potter (1900-1981)

Painter of landscapes, seascapes, still-life, interiors and portraits in both oil and watercolour. Mary Potter studied at the Beckenham School of Art in 1916 and the Slade under Tonks and Steer (1918 - 1920).

Potter did not align herself with any group or movement; she worked independently and intermittently throughout her long life, attracting many loyal admirers of her work. Influenced by Klee and by Oriental painting, her work combined commitment to subject, light and atmosphere with growing abstraction. She used light, pale-toned colour and thin paint to depict ethereal, light suffused forms.

In 1927 she married the writer Stephen Potter, moving to Chiswick then later Aldeburgh. She exhibited with the 7 & 5 Society in 1922 and 1923, at the New English Art Club from 1920 and with the Leicester Galleries from 1927, and held her first solo exhibition at the Bloomsbury Gallery in 1931.

Her work was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1980 and at the Serpentine Gallery in 1981. Her paintings are represented in the Tate and many public collections in the UK and abroad.

She is now recognised as one of the foremost women painters of her time