ARTIST STATEMENT
Becoming a parent 29 years ago I found myself so captivated by the role, that what had been years of daily creative output, attenuated with sometimes years between moments of visual art production. Two years ago I reclaimed a space for my studio and began again, accepting myself (at age 63) as an eager beginner. The title of this call for work, In Full View, and the description of what the exhibition seeks, could hardly have been more compelling to me at this moment in my personal and artistic life. Once I read about the exhibition, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, which led me to reflect exactly and specifically on the asked for theme through a self-portrait. And the experience turned out to be riveting: to attempt to somehow include in this one self-portrait all of the personal history, the expression through time of everything in this one life seen, overlooked, revealed, or hidden. I sometimes felt like Dr. Frankenstein or Pinocchio’s puppeteer trying to will the portrait to life, or other times had the need to quickly avert my gaze from my image, as if I was reading a diary I was not entirely meant to be privy to.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mary Ann Bucklin’s practice encompasses painting, printmaking and performance art. She received her certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1983, the same year she debuted her first performance work at the Painted Bride Art Center. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Philadelphia region and is represented in the permanent collection of PAFA. Bucklin attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in the Fine Arts, the Master of Liberal Arts degree with a focus on Cultural Diversity and Racial Relations, and completed her Ph.D. coursework in Folklore with a special interest in spontaneous spiritual experience.
© Mary Ann Bucklin