Dr. Mary Ann Stafford - Artist and Educator
A large family and teaching career kept me from pursuing a serious career in the fine arts until retirement in 1993. My education credentials include a BSE and MA degrees in English; art hours from Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Arkansas, and an EdD in Secondary Education with an emphasis in art education. I taught high school English, humanities, and art for sixteen years, was an assistant principal for five years, and was Staff Development Coordinator at the Arkansas Department of Education until retirement.
Since then, I have been painting full time and have taken several workshops from nationally recognized artists, including Doug Dawson, Richard McKinley, Sally Strand, Carole Katchen, Gerald Brommer, and Skip Lawrence. Still an educator, I teach drawing and pastel at the Arkansas Arts Center and at the Maumelle Senior Wellness Center. I am also available to teach pastel workshops throughout the State. I have been juried into many regional and national shows and featured in solo shows in Fort Smith, El Dorado, Little Rock, Pine Bluff, Stuttgart, and Hot Springs. Currently my work is on display at Boswell/Mourot Fine Art in Little Rock, Fine Arts Center in Hot Springs, and Eurekan Art in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
I enjoy working with watercolor, collage, and mixed media, but pastel is my chosen medium. This is because pastel is both a drawing and painting medium, and I love to do both. The versatility and immediacy of the medium are most appealing to me; my favorite method of working is layering hard and soft pastels over an underpainting. Since teaching more drawing classes lately, I am currently working with pen and ink on a watercolor background, and in colored pencil. In 2012, I received the Scholarship Award from the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts to produce 25 pen and ink drawings of Argenta structures listed in the National Historic Register. These images will be published in a coffee table-type book with historical and architectural facts for each structure.
My husband and I are members of Our Lady of the Holy Souls Catholic Church in Little Rock, where I serve as choir member and substitute organist. Arts organizations to which I belong include the Arkansas League of Artists, Conway League of Artists, and I am a founding member of the Arkansas Pastel Society. I received signature membership in the Pastel Society of the Southwest (Texas) in 2006 and I received signature membership in the Mid-Southern Watercolorists in 2008.