“These are tough minded paintings. They come from a strong-minded engagement. They do not come easily into this world. They become a format for working things out. Mary brings a focus and determination to her work. No part of her sits idly by - this is full engagement. Mind, body and spirit wrestle each other for room to speak. Spirit and transcendence are never far from the plumbing and practicality of life. The grid holds the will to ascend in constant conversation with the formulations of the mind.

As I sit with these paintings a strange and compelling elegance starts to emerge. these paintings work. They cohere and they speak. This unity that seems to emerge from the long process f birthing, from the coming into being, contains a wisdom. It takes the inclusion, the piling on of everything, and it creates a place of abundance. These paintings in the end seem to hold the wisdom of the garden or perhaps the gardener. The seeds laid out in a grid become the full-blown explosion of the vegetable garden. Nature with all its complexity and mystery seems to bring MN back to her joy and she brings us along for the whole ride. We get to experience the infinite doorways that open up with close observation and close in experience of nature’s tiniest fragments. A simple flower takes on the magnitude of procreation. These loaded intense paintings seem to crack open our hunger and out questing - the build up of our restlessness. They split open, like atoms, with a ferocity and aliveness of the primal forces of nature. They bring us back to what is at our feet in those long days of summer. They are about redemption. Redemption from the insatiable hunger of our minds back to our ability to be astonished.”

Timothy Hawkesworth, Painter

“There are some artists for whom the division between the natural world and their fingertips has little meaning. To say their art is personal is neither wholly accurate nor a complete thought. An organic presence that can not be named has been woven into these elaborate drawings.

Addressing our emotive need to merge into nature- including both our intimacy with its beauty and our terror over our fate. Eventual absorption into it - Natalizia expresses this relationship through conscious use of material and marks.

Overtly concerned with the minutiae of nature and flora, her work contains symbols of reproduction and birth galore. This, however is leavened through limpid space created by a variety of physical peculiarities that trace the wanderings of the creative hand. A conversational balance between the natural and the internal worlds prevails, permitting the viewer’s eye to integrate with the artists’ mediation.”

Don Davis, Painter and Writer