The Paintings of Mary McClelland

Spiritual Paintings

During the last decade of her life, Mary moved from portraying animals to more deeply spiritual themes. To be sure, she had always been weaving spiritual content in with her animal bones and dreamy backgrounds, but in the 1970s she began to work in a more vision-centered mode with distinct mystical overtones. This change reflected Mary's own spiritual growth, as her Quaker religious foundation became enhanced by Indian and Tibetan influences. Animals and bones still played roles in her work, but these were often placed in larger, more complex paintings, often in mandala-form, with elements of architecture, human figures, and sometimes very fierce demons.

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