MARY TATUM

OCTOBER 12TH 1925
SEPTEMBER 14TH 1997

HER LIFE AND CREATIVE WORK

Mary Tatum was one of those fortunate painters recognised almost at once as an extraordinary artistic personality. As is said of race horses, "she zoomed out of the gate". When she studied at the School of Art of the Richmond Professional Institute, Richmond, Virginia, USA, in 1947, Theresa Pollak and Maurice Bonds, both highly esteemed instructors, saw her as one of the elect and encouraged her daring and intelligent originality. Before the end of her second year she was selected to represent the Institute at the national symposium and exhibition Art Schools USA.

Graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts, in 1950, she joined the faculty of St. Christopher's School, in Richmond, where she taught while pursuing her career in painting. The following year she was was selected for the first solo exhibition at the newly formed Linden Gallery on West Franklin Street's famed Linden Row. At the same time she was awarded the Virginia Museum of Fine Art's Travelling Fellowship. With this she went to New York to attend the Art Students' League. After several months at the League she transferred to the Hans Hofmann School on 8th Street. Like her Richmond teachers, Hofmann was quickly impressed with her abilities, first offering her a full scholarship and then making her his secretary and soon director both of his 8th Street and Provincetown, Massachusetts, Schools.

She remained with the Hofmann Schools during all of 1952, but in January, 1953, she sailed for Europe with Ross Abrams, the painter and print-maker whom she had married the previous year, Her husband, also a graduate of Richmond Professional Institute's School of Art and a decorated infantry combat veteran of World War II, had himself launched a very successful career as an artist, with his paintings and prints in many collections both public and private. Mary and Ross rented a house in the charming town of Deià, on the Island of Mallorca. In the shadow of towering crags and in sight of the Mediterranean. Mary began producing the series of lively and sumptuous paintings that within a year covered all the walls of her house.

The paintings were inspired and, in most cases, executed from what Cézanne called "the motive": Stoned-lined terraces, ancient olive trees with fantastic trunks writhing and knotted beneath light grey-green foliage, the scene punctuated at surprising intervals by masonry buildings, their ochre walls overhung by orange colored tiles. The landscape is also interspersed with patches of bright flowering plants and clumps of blossoming shrubs. Tatum's brushes caught it all with lusty impasto and quirky movements in apt correspondence to all the excitements of the view. Inside the house, arrangements of walls, windows, furnishings and, above all, the human and animal figures quickened her painterly instincts, offering every vitality of form and color that she understood so perfectly how to translate into her distinctive pictorial language.

Mary and Ross extended their stay for nearly three years, leaving Deià but once for a jaunt to the continent where they traveled widely and visited the great museums. Returning to Mallorca, they welcomed the birth of their first child, a daughter Amy Isabel. When, late in 1955, they became convinced of the necessity to return, at least temporarily, to the United States, they had made so many interesting friends in Deià that they purchased a small house there, which was later to become their studio.

They returned to their apartment in Manhattan, but in June of 1956 they moved to Richmond where Ross had accepted a position as painting instructor at the Professional Institute. He continued printmaking with increasing success in recognition and sales. Mary entered a period of intense activity, turning out and exhibiting work that became the talk of the local art world and soon reverberated throughout Virginia and neighboring states. In the spring of 1957 she exhibited Figure at the Virginia Museum's Sixteenth Biennial of Virginia Artists and was awarded the Certificate of Distinction. At the same time the director of the Florence Museum, in South Carolina, purchased the largest of her Mallorcan paintings for exhibition at that museum. The following year the Virginia Museum purchased her Paradise Tree from its national competitive exhibition, 'American Painting'.

MARY WITH JAKE, 1973

Without reducing her painting activity, Tatum began experimenting with ceramic mosaics, completing both pictorial panels and table top decorations in the medium. At this time also another baby daughter, Margaret Louisa, joined the family. Their productive life continued with both exhibiting regularly and steadily gaining support from collectors. Mary's Mother and Child drawing was purchased by Richmond's Valentine Museum, and Ross's prints entered the collections of both the Library of Congress and Bibliothèque National, in Paris. Mary was also participating in the Virginia Museum's Lease-Purchase Program.

Mallorca still occupied a large place in their hearts, and early in 1962 they began preparations to return there. In the fall they organized a sale of their work, announcing it through newspaper advertisement and mailings. More than fifty paintings were sold, and the family, with a very comfortable sum in its account, returned to Mallorca. A return that proved to be definitive.

Again they rented a house in Deià, and they were still there two years later when their son John Russell was born. Then they purchased and restored a charming old dwelling, "Ca'n Xescot." In partnership with the American painter Marc Heine, Mary and Ross established an art gallery in the town where their work was on permanent exhibition, opened annually from Easter through October. The gallery succeeded very well. Ross's prints and Mary's paintings appealed to many sophisticated collectors among the visitors who came to Deià every spring and summer. Their works also found places in many homes of the island's permanent residents. In February, 1975, El Conejo Gallery of Palma held an individual exhibition of Mary's paintings.

The years and the decades continued to charm. Then illness made its insidious entrance. Within a few years symptoms of parkinsonism and arteriosclerosis had diminished her energy and affected her work which still retained its strong appeal until very near the end of her activity. Surrounded by family and friends she died quietly in her room at Ca'n Xescot, September 14th. The next afternoon she was entombed in the hilltop cemetery by the old church with its view of olive-tree covered hills and the Mediterranean Sea.

This biographical sketch is by Ulysse Desportes from the catalogue of a retropective exhibition at the Staunton-Augusta Art Association, Stanton, Virginia, USA, August 18th to September 15th 2000.

For information about the part of Mallorca where Mary lived and worked, visit www.sollernet.com