Artist Mary Ann Rogers on Her Incredible Career in Northumberland
We meet up with long-time Living North supporter and iconic local artist Mary Ann Rogers
Born and bred in the North East, Mary Ann Rogers lives and breathes Northumberland. If you’re not a loyal visitor to Living North’s fairs then, you should be, but you don’t have to be to have seen her highly collectable artwork which is exhibited in galleries throughout the UK and features in private collections worldwide. Over decades she’s made a name for herself in the region’s art scene, and art lovers flock to her West Woodburn gallery.
‘As a child I would always have a sketchbook and I would draw what I saw,’ she tells us. ‘I think a background of accurate drawing has always stood me in good stead. I always felt that I would do something where I was responding to what I saw. It might have been music or writing but painting just felt like home to me. It felt like the right place for me to express myself.’
The art Mary Ann creates tends to follow the seasons. ‘From the first snowdrops of spring and the daffodils, I spend a lot of time studying wildlife, and creeping about places,’ she laughs. ‘I set my nature camera up just to find out more about the way animals behave (things like foxes, badgers, deer and otters). All that right through to the drama of the autumn/winter skies and how that reflects on the landscape around here.
‘I’m known as a wildlife painter and I work in watercolour which is absolutely my passion. It’s a fluid medium which takes on a bit of a life of its own in conjunction with pure white paper and water. The medium itself is fascinating to me, as well as the subjects. I only paint things which really strike a chord with me, and which absolutely cry out to be painted, I don’t do commissions and I steer clear of subjects which are perhaps overdone (for example puffins or Sycamore Gap). Integrity and honesty are the bywords for the way I work.’ She’s never short of work and, from Young Farmers to charities such as Tynedale Hospice at Home, she is always keen to support the local community, for example via raffling paintings or hosting charity events.
While Mary Ann’s skills means she could document wildlife anywhere in the world, she remains rooted in the North East, and is passionate about where she lives and works. ‘I come from this area and I feel utterly woven in with it, not just as a painter but also in what I do,’ she reflects. ‘I’ve probably walked up most of the hills and swum down most of the rivers and across most of the lakes and on most of the beaches in the North East. I do enjoy walking. My husband and I often just take off with a sandwich and a rucksack to walk somewhere really special like in the Coquet Valley. We never run out of somewhere different to walk and on our walks we usually encounter wildlife. There’s always so much of interest.
‘I made it a bit of a mission to try and swim in most of the bodies of water in the North East, and I’ve still got a few to go but that’s a great way to explore the area even more. When you swim outside there’s a lot to take in like the colour of the water, the wildlife, the birdlife, the temperature of the water (being careful not to stay in too long when it’s very cold) and the weather. It’s something I’ve done all my life. We were very lucky. My mother would take us all over the place and there was no question that we could get in the river, lake or sea. We were taught to swim quite well when we were very young – that was important.’
‘I would say more has changed in the last 25 years than has
done in the previous maybe 200. It’s been exciting to be there’
Mary Ann has plenty of career highlights to share. ‘Probably the very first one was being invited to put up an exhibition of my own work in 1987 (I think) in a gallery on Gosforth High Street – that was an enormous thing to be asked to do,’ she says. ‘I was very young, and it was the first of many. I’ve been invited to exhibit in places I’d never imagined. I received the Best Selling Published Artist award [from the Fine Art Trade Guild] in 2009 but prior to that I was probably the only female artist who’d ever been anywhere near making a name for themselves within the world of published art in the UK. That was a really big deal.’
Mary Ann continues to share her artwork in her own gallery and across the world, but also runs an online shop and remains active on social media. ‘Without gallery representation, back when I started, you’d find it extremely difficult to make any sort of a living. However over the years, and with the onset of the internet, it’s much more normal now for artists to not only create their work but to create their own careers and their own space within the ether,’ she reflects. ‘It continues to be important to have work displayed in galleries, but the way people look for art now is not as narrow as it used to be. If they wanted something for their house they would go to their local art gallery on the high street, or the framer, or a poster shop, or somewhere like Fenwick which would have an area devoted to art, whereas now they can simply go “I know I like abstract art” and just type “abstract” in. What I’m trying to say is that artists now, including myself, can create and manage their own careers, and need to be as creative as the paint on the paper on how they get that message across to the rest of the world. As a result, artists can get random purchases from all over, not just the UK, but the world. That’s been the most enormous change.
‘I would say more has changed in the last 25 years than has done in the previous maybe 200. It’s been exciting to be there. I would’ve probably been the first artist to have my own website in the North East, and I would be the first artist to have e-commerce on that website. I’ve always enjoyed the excitement of doing something new and investigating new ways of finding a platform.’
Mary Ann’s advice to makers and creators is to be honest about what speaks to your heart and how you then describe it using the skills that you’ve developed. ‘The downside of this amazing platform that is the internet is that any of us can see what anyone else does,’ she explains. ‘I now see endless copies of certain artists’s work. My advice would be to be true to yourself. If you believe in your work then go and talk to galleries. I think we still want the validation of having someone who deals with art saying “I want your work on my walls”, because that costs money in a way that sharing across the internet doesn’t. It says a lot. It’s an investment in a particular artist.’
Mary Ann points out that art can be a lonely career, and she’s thankful for the support she’s received from others. ‘There are some really well-established artists who have been in the past very generous with their time when I might discuss something with them,’ she says. ‘I would definitely think about speaking to someone who is perhaps two steps ahead of you in their career – be bold and do that.’
Many of the subjects of Mary Ann’s paintings over the years have been unexpected, and that’s what she says is most exciting about what she does. ‘Chance encounters and suggestions tend to dictate what happens,’ she says. ‘I might go to a certain place and see a type of bird or animal and it completely grips me and that dictates what happens. For instance, quite a lot of years ago I had a visitor to the gallery who bought a painting and discussed whether I did commissions and I said I didn’t, but as he was leaving, I asked “what was it you were thinking I might paint?,” and he said “I have a blue and gold macaw”. He brought it into the gallery and I was absolutely blown away by this incredibly beautiful macaw and its colours and personality. I said I would absolutely love to paint this. He brought it back and I did several paintings. As a result, I asked if I could visit a collection of macaws and parrots near Middlesbrough and spent some time down there doing paintings of scarlet and military macaws, and spent months immersed in these incredibly beautiful birds. Someone brought a toucan to the studio which again was quite stunning. I just expect this sort of thing to continue happening throughout my career, and to hopefully be open to that.’
