The Paintings of Mary McClelland

Insects

In the mid 1960s Mary spent much of her artistic energy on collecting, sketching and painting insects.  Insects were all around her in the family summer home on Yelping Hill, and she found them uniformly fascinating and beautiful.  Part of the reason for this may have been because insects wear their "bones" on the outside, so they fit in with Mary's concept of letting bones show.  Also, insects satisfied in some way Mary's interest in creatures that have both beauty and scariness interwoven in the same being.

Mary's insect paintings arose from countless sketches of the creatures she collected.  One of her favorite methods was to hang a white sheet overnight in the woods with a light bulb shining on it; in the morning there would be a large pile of insects of all kinds at the bottom.  The sketches were only starting points, though, as Mary often let her imagination go when it came to anatomical precision.  Notable in these paintings is a frequent use of watercolor, rather than oil or acrylic, and the application of insect parts and especially cobwebs as collages to give three-dimensionality to the paintings.

Click on an image...

Bee on Flower	Cricket	Dead Dragonfly	Ichneumon	Mud Wasp	Spider	Winged Bugs	Waterbug	Moth
Ant	Beetle	Praying Mantis

Other insect paintings...

Spider  (oil on masonite, 23" x 30")
Spider  (30" x 22")
Beetle  (watercolor, ink, and leaf collage, 32" x 42")
Goliath Beetle  (acrylic on canvas)