Mary Arnold is a conservation artist living and working where high desert meets the mountains. She is fascinated with wildlife and geology, and in advocating for the land and animals of the west. Her goal is to explore humanity’s connection to nature and carry a message of balanced land and animal conservation through my art. As a land and wildlife advocate and an Idaho Master Naturalist, Mary embraces projects that engage the nexus of ecology and human values and seek to understand the emotion, beliefs and philosophies that prompt us to protect our environment and wildlife and preserve our biodiversity in nature.
Growing up on her parents’ farm, the connection between the stewardship of land and animals and the success of humans was a very real daily lesson. Mary’s childhood was full of experiences exploring Idaho’s fields and hills, riding her horse to a steep-walled canyon or rocky butte, working on the farm, competing in rodeos, and spending summers in the Sawtooths.
Mary attended undergraduate school in Austin, Texas, and graduate school in Arizona, and her love of the west spread beyond Idaho. Today, she directs her art practice in support of conservation topics, collaborating with land trusts, state and national parks, non-profit organizations, and wildlife rehabilitation efforts, seeking to explore the crossroads of our western plains and sagebrush ecosystems, the balanced use of the land, and the impact on wildlife and species survival.
Mary’s art style is firmly seated in the Fauve tradition, with a western twist. Fauvism seeks to separate color from its descriptive, representational purpose and allow it to exist on the canvas as an independent element without having to be true to the natural world. Painting wildlife in their normal daily lives, motherhood, hunting, survival, and other sentient or even anthropomorphized behavior, portrays the role and importance that every animal serves in a balanced ecosystem.