Master of Still Life: Mary Ann Currier
Episode #101 | First Aired: January 15, 2008
“Mary Ann is good in art.”
At age 5, as the note from her kindergarten report card attests, Mary Ann Currier was already showing talent as an artist. Three-quarters of a century later, she is widely acclaimed as an outstanding American realist painter. Though she didn’t have her first solo show until she was 50, today her breathtakingly realistic still lifes are coveted by top private and institutional collectors. Her work hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, and the Jacksonville Art Museum as well as the collections of ExxonMobil, American Express, Cargill Inc., and Goldman Sachs.

Born and raised in Louisville, Currier studied in Chicago and then returned to Louisville to teach at the Louisville School of Art. In the 1960s and ’70s, she experimented with a variety of styles, forms, and materials, but by the mid-1970s, she was focusing on still-life painting.
Her talent as a painter is one aspect of Currier’s story. Equally important is the influence she has had on numerous other Kentucky artists as an exceptional teacher of art. She taught at the Louisville School of Art from 1962 until 1982. Though now closed, the school was, at the time, a center of Louisville’s creative community, and Currier’s students included many young artists who went on to highly successful careers, among them sculptors Ed Hamilton and Dave Caudill and assemblage artist Jacque Parsley.
In a one-hour documentary airing as part of the Kentucky Muse series, several interviews at Currier’s home and studio in Louisville are included. She recalls her early interest in visual art, attending art school in Chicago, and returning to Louisville to work—first as a commercial artist for Stewart’s department store and eventually as a teacher at the Louisville School of Art. The program visits a gallery exhibit of her work in New York City and a 2005 retrospective at Louisville’s Speed Art Museum. Currier’s husband, Lionel; her daughters, Nancy and Anne Currier and Frances Lewis; and former students are also interviewed.
“Master of Still Life” is also a video exhibit of works spanning Currier’s career—from early illustrations and silkscreens to nudes and portraits to the large-scale oil pastel and charcoal compositions of fruit, onions, roses, glasses, and other ordinary objects that have made her a star among contemporary still life painters. Seeing a work in progress offers insight into her meticulous and contemplative process.
Selected Works by Mary Ann Currier
“Mary Ann Currier paints the world both around and within her, illuminating the majesty and mystery of the everyday with her concentrated, poetic vision,” wrote Alice Gray Stites, curator of the retrospective exhibit of Currier’s work at the Speed Art Museum in 2005.
Currier is regarded as an important contemporary American realist painter. As narrative from the Speed Museum notes, “While Currier’s fruits and vegetables, dishes, and textiles demonstrate the influence of the Old Master Dutch and Spanish still-life painters, they are clearly of this moment. They illustrate the continued vitality of realism in contemporary art, emphasizing the visual poetry in the artist’s large-scale still-life paintings.”
This online gallery reflects a progression of Currier’s works, including examples of stripe paintings and black-and-white florals from the 1970s; color pastels and her “postcard series” from the 1980s; and her more recent works depicting glass, fruit, and roses.
Apples in Basket (1983) Oil pastel 29-1/4 by 39-1/2 inches Private collection Apples Cezanne (1989) Oil pastel 26 by 31-1/4 inches Private collection Apples and Mail (1987) Oil pastel 52 by 60 inches Private collection Apricots Degas (1989) Oil pastel 24-1/2 by 31 inches Private collection Onions and Saltshaker (1980) Pastel 35-1/2 by 59-3/4 inches Private collection Peaches Bruyn (1988) Oil pastel 33-3/4 by 34 inches Robert W. Eickmeyer Pears in Plastic (1991) Oil pastel 20-1/4 by 34 inches Private collection Petunia II (1978) Oil on canvas 35 by 72 inches Private collection Plums Van Der Weyden (1989) Oil pastel 23-1/2 by 34-1/2 inches Private collection Acrylic on canvas 14 by 40 inches Collection of the artist Banana Samba (1996) Oil pastel 13-1/2 by 22-3/4 inches Private collection Bonita (1996) Charcoal 13 by 20-1/2 inches University of Louisville On Chiffon (2002) Oil on museum board 15 by 24 inches Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, NY and Santa Fe, NM Du … (c. 1973) Acrylic on canvas 20 by 40 inches Collection of the artist East Palatka Onions (1983) Oil pastel 35-1/2 by 59-3/4 inches Private collection Glass and Albers (1999) Oil pastel 24-3/4 by 21-1/2 inches Private collection Glass w. Banana (1998) Oil pastel 21-1/4 by 31-3/4 inches Private collection Two Roses (2004) Charcoal on gray paper 17-5/8 by 23-1/4 inches Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, NY and Santa Fe, NM