{"id":788387,"date":"2026-05-11T08:52:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T08:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/788387\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T08:52:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T08:52:42","slug":"art-painter-mary-pettis-has-learned-natures-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/788387\/","title":{"rendered":"Art: Painter Mary Pettis has learned nature’s language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Landscape artist Mary Pettis is walking along the St. Croix River in Interstate State Park just south of Taylors Falls, trying to decide on the subject of her next painting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be half water, half sky,\u201d said Pettis, scanning the Wisconsin shoreline. \u201cGenerally speaking, the story should be either the water or the land. So where do you put the horizon line? If I set up here, then what\u2019s going to happen with the light? Can I make a painting out of something that\u2019s so subtle and so dull?\u201d<\/p>\n

It turns out she can.<\/p>\n

\"AArtist Mary Pettis painted “Waking Spring” during a two-hour session on the banks of the St. Croix River at Interstate Park on Thursday, April 30, 2026. (Courtesy of Mary Pettis)<\/p>\n

Within two hours of setting up her easel and paints \u2014 kept in a \u201cgo bag\u201d in the back of her Toyota Highlander, which she calls \u201cScottie\u201d \u2014 Pettis produces a 12-by-16-inch painting filled with light and color that somehow captures the moving water, swaying trees and glistening sunbeams.<\/p>\n

Pettis, 72, of Taylors Falls, is one of the nation\u2019s top painters in the en plein air tradition, painting \u201cin the open air.\u201d She was recently named a Top 40 Finalist in the 15th Annual PleinAir Salon Art Competition \u2014 chosen from among the year\u2019s monthly award winners, representing hundreds of painters from around the world.<\/p>\n

\"AMary Pettis’ painting “Quiet Visitor” was named a “Top 40 Finalist” in the 15th Annual PleinAir Salon Art Competition. “I raised my children a few miles from this beautiful Cascade Falls, in Osceola,” Pettis wrote in her artist’s statement. “In every season I would trek down the 100 stairs, with my painting gear and kids in tow. In those days, I sought mostly to understand the waterfall, to understand why things look the way they do, to learn how to paint outdoors, to try to make a good picture. Now, decades later, I return. I am still in awe of its beauty. I stand at my easel silenced by this earthen vessel of powerful memories … a great blue heron as my witness.” (Courtesy of Mary Pettis)<\/p>\n

Her painting \u201cQuiet Visitor,\u201d which features Cascade Falls in Osceola, Wis., was named the \u201cBest Plein Air Landscape\u201d in July 2025. It\u2019s now in the running for a $15,000 grand prize and a cover feature in PleinAir Magazine. The winner will be announced May 14 at the PleinAir Convention & Expo in Branson, Mo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a rare and significant honor,\u201d said Jen Kochevar, her longtime business partner. \u201cIt places Mary among the finest painters in the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The painting, which is done in Pettis\u2019 signature contemporary style of expressive realism, showcases \u201cMary\u2019s brilliance with a brush,\u201d Kochevar said. \u201cThe first time I saw it, I had a deeply moving experience. It viscerally pulled me in towards it and, simultaneously, reached out and touched me. All I knew was that I couldn\u2019t walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding her subject<\/p>\n

Pettis checked out several spots along the St. Croix River before unpacking her easel and oil paints near a picnic table just south of the boat ramp.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the moving water here,\u201d she said. \u201cI love the dark bank over there, and I love the sloping trees. There are two sloping trees that kind of have a rhythm to them, and those trees with the grayer trunks, I kind of like those, too. I like how that plays with the bank. So I think this is my spot. Yeah, this is great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettis said she pictures the painting in her mind before ever putting brush to canvas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the sky will be an element, but it will be a high horizon,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ll wait for there to be a little squall on the water. \u2026 OK, it\u2019s done in my head. I love the rocks here. I may or may not put them in. We\u2019ll see. The painting will tell me what it wants to do. I\u2019m going to move that tree over a little bit because I\u2019m an artist, and I can move mountains! The story that I\u2019m going to tell is looking at the light through the trees. I\u2019ll wait until it happens again. There was light back there, and then all these trees were silhouetted. It was so beautiful. That\u2019s what my story is going to be about.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of her favorite times to paint is late morning, she said, \u201cright before the light flips.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like looking into the light with the shadows of the big trees,\u201d she said. \u201cIt just seems to be such a wonderful metaphor. Once the light starts getting into afternoon light, then I start looking for a different subject because the light becomes flat. It doesn\u2019t have that mysterious, looking-into-the-shadows thing across the river. I love backlight.\u201d<\/p>\n

The St. Croix River, a federally protected riverway, is her favorite subject. She estimates she\u2019s painted it 3,000 to 4,000 times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love its stunning beauty,\u201d Pettis said. \u201cI love the color of the water. The water is colored by the tamarack tree, kind of a root-beer color, which is a beautiful balance to all the greens \u2014 and just the metaphorical symbolic significance of it is really profound. I love that it has been preserved for eons, and it will remain like this. No one can build on it or destroy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettis poured a few tablespoons of water into two milk-carton caps and then put on a pair of disposable chemical-resistant black gloves \u2014 a must ever since doctors found she had arsenic in her blood, she said \u2014 before unpacking her paints.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is fast-dry titanium white by Gamblin,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has alkyd in it, which will help the painting dry faster. It\u2019s wonderful for en plein air painting events. I thought transparent orange might be good depending on how the soft maples are budding out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still more colors come out: cadmium yellow light, Naples yellow, cadmium orange, transparent yellow oxide, alizarin crimson, phthalo green, king\u2019s blue, ultramarine blue and transparent oxide brown. Her favorite is Old Holland bright violet, which is \u201cvery potent,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s about 60 bucks a tube.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettis put a half-teaspoon of the vibrant violet color on her palette, and then used the tip of her silver palette knife to capture a spot of color the size of a grain of rice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatch what it\u2019ll do,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I mix this with the Cadmium yellow light, I can make my own ochre with the violet. This way I can bend the color toward the violet if I want or toward the yellow over here. If you really want to see what\u2019s happening, then you add just a little bit of white, and look at that. See, it\u2019s not just brown. It\u2019s just, like, beautiful. Nummy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Living Master\u2019
\n\"MaryArtist Mary Pettis talks about her painting philosophy in her studio in Taylors Falls. (John Autey \/ Pioneer Press)<\/p>\n

Pettis\u2019 works have been exhibited in Geneva, Barcelona, New York City and Scottsdale. She has taught painting workshops in the Upper Midwest, Italy, France and Maui. The average price of her paintings is around $7,000.<\/p>\n

In 2017, Pettis became only the ninth American woman painter to be named an \u201cARC Living Master\u201d by the Art Renewal Center \u2014 a designation recognizing the world\u2019s finest classical painters.<\/p>\n

The designation is for artists who are \u201ccreating fully professional works of art, as well as some identifiable masterpieces,\u201d Pettis said. \u201c\u2018Some identifiable masterpieces,\u2019 I just love that. But that\u2019s kind of where I feel that I am \u2014 an occasional masterpiece. Every once in a while, I\u2019ll have one that I think, \u2018OK, I deserve (that) title.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettis, who has three children, two grandchildren and two foster grandchildren, grew up on a farm in Kasota, Minn. \u201cIt was a really wonderful upbringing, and I\u2019m sure that it informed my work ethic,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can be really inspired and really talented, but not get anywhere if you\u2019re not willing to do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettis said she decided to be an artist while attending the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., where she studied painting, music and drama, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in \u2018Macbeth\u2019 my freshman year,\u201d she said. \u201cAt the same time, I was taking a painting class and painting a still-life of my grandfather\u2019s things. They were his hunting things. He had just passed away, and it was his cap and a decoy and a number of gun shells and his scarf and the duck box. It was very complicated, and I lost myself in the work. I would paint till 4 o\u2019clock in the morning. It just kept looking more and more real.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the play, all I had to show for it was the program, but after the painting class, I had a beautiful and captivating memorial to my grandpa,\u201d she said. \u201cI thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to be a painter.\u2019 I never questioned whether or not I could do it. I\u2019m just so stubborn and dogged, and I figured if I keep my heart in the right place and keep trying to relay the experiences that I\u2019m having through paint, through this medium, through this language, that if there\u2019s room for me at the top, then that\u2019ll be great. That\u2019ll be frosting on the cake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettis was a student of Hungarian painter Bela Petheo at St. John\u2019s University, Richard Lack at Atelier Lack in Minneapolis and\u00a0Daniel Graves, who founded The Florence Academy of Art. In the 1990s, artist Jim Wilcox introduced her to the \u201cwet-in-wet\u201d en plein air approach, and she moved her studio outdoors, she said.<\/p>\n

Pettis and her husband, Randy Pearson, start nearly every day with a swim in the St. Croix River, as soon as its temperature hits 60 degrees, generally May through October. During the winter, the two cross-country ski and hike with Boom, their golden retriever.<\/p>\n

\u201cI go outside when I need to refill my soul,\u201d she said. \u201cI usually don\u2019t think while I\u2019m painting outside. I just respond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learning and teaching<\/p>\n

Pettis works outdoors in all types of weather. \u201cGenerations,\u201d a finalist in the American Impressionist Society\u2019s 22nd Annual National Juried Exhibition, was painted en plein air in her backyard when it was \u201c23 degrees, not counting the wind chill,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"SmallPettis painted “Generations” in the back yard of her house in Taylors Falls in 2021. The painting was a finalist in the American Impressionist Society’s 22nd Annual National Juried Exhibition held at Gallery 1516 in Omaha, Neb. in September 2021. “I love these old white oaks on the edge of our woods, particularly against the snow,” she wrote in her artist’s statement. “When the first light of day strikes them and their young companions, they are absolutely captivating. This was painted on two very cold mornings, but the experience was worth every frozen finger!” (Courtesy of Mary Pettis)<\/p>\n

She pushes herself to learn something every time she goes out to paint and regularly tests herself with different challenges like using a different kind of blue, limiting her palette to just a few colors, expanding her palette to more than a dozen colors, or giving herself a time limit, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just like learning new words,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat is it that I particularly like this particular time of day, this particular day? Maybe I\u2019m trying to unlock the mystery of moving water or changing clouds. How do you help people hear the spring peepers or sandhill cranes, even though they\u2019re not in the painting?\u201d<\/p>\n

When she isn\u2019t painting outside, Pettis works out of a studio next door to her house in Taylors Falls. It\u2019s lined with dozens of her paintings. Classical music from Minnesota Public Radio streams from her computer. A small message \u2014 written in pencil on one of the wooden arms of her easel \u2014 reads: \u201cLet me do my best with my simple gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNature is telling me how it wants to be painted,\u201d said Pettis, who occasionally teaches art workshops around the country. \u201cWhat that means, as an expressive realist, is that as the feeling comes to me, I put it down unedited. I just don\u2019t think about it. I\u2019m painting intuitively right now. I spent a lot of years plodding along and thinking and doing, but that was to learn the language. Once you learn the language, it\u2019s like (John) Ruskin said: \u2018What good is it to be a great orator if you have nothing of import to say?\u2019 It\u2019s more important to have something to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Award-winning artist Kami Mendlik, who grew up in Marine on St. Croix<\/a>, said she had to persuade Pettis to take her on as a student in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was really busy and occupied, and she didn\u2019t seem to have a lot of time,\u201d said Mendlik, who lives in Grant. \u201cI basically just kept knocking at her door. I remember asking her, \u2018How do you paint a tree?\u2019 She said, \u2018Well, go paint 100 trees and then come back and ask me that.\u2019 So I did, and then I brought my 100 paintings of trees back, knocked on her door and said, \u2018OK, so I still have a question.\u2019 She was like, \u2018OK, come in. I\u2019m going to pass this on to you, but you have to pass it on.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMary was the first person that really believed that I could do this, and I needed that then,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was just like a belief system, like \u2018You can do this.\u2019 The power of believing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettis said she used to spend weeks, even months, making sure all the details of a painting were perfect. \u201cIt took forever to get fast,\u201d she said. \u201cIt took miles and miles and miles of canvas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, after five decades of painting, Pettis said she has reached the point where she is \u201cgrabbing the essence of what (she is) feeling and then figuring out which tools are going to be the most appropriate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like making music or writing poetry rather than long, thick novels,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat kind of color scheme, what kind of values, what kind of composition and what kind of brush work will help somebody else feel something when they look at that painting \u2014 not just recognize it as a subject or a particular motif, but how do we get them to feel something? How do I express it in a manner in which it touches somebody\u2019s heart and not just their mind?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Never the same\u2019
\n\"APettis works on a painting along the banks of the St. Croix River at Interstate Park. (John Autey \/ Pioneer Press)<\/p>\n

As she worked on her painting of the St. Croix River the other morning, Pettis said she has no plans to slow down or retire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what it\u2019s about,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s about communing with nature and being drawn into it. It\u2019s never, never the same. It\u2019s affected by what\u2019s happening in places that we can\u2019t see. Just like life, everything affects everything else. If it rains in the northern part of the watershed, up in the Namekagon, then it affects it down here. It\u2019s all connected.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at that swirl,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s a cute little swirl, but I can\u2019t have that because if I had a sweep like that, that would not be the feeling that I\u2019m after. That\u2019s too dynamic and moves too fast. The movement that I want is slower, so I have to pick and choose those elements that will reflect the calmness and serenity and the subtlety and the harmony.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettis took out a paper towel and began rubbing the paints together on the easel. \u201cWhile I do this, I\u2019m sensing what the story is going to be about for me,\u201d she said. \u201cAlready I\u2019m feeling the movement of the water and just this pull. I like to push the color first, and then back up on it as much as is necessary to tell the story or to make a good painting. I\u2019m going to just try to get the feeling of it first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettis then added a dab of green to the canvas. \u201cThere\u2019s not going to be a lot of green,\u201d she said. \u201cJust a whisper. And then I\u2019ll just build them up slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n

She took a step back to appraise her work.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden, it\u2019s looking back at me,\u201d she said. \u201cI love that. That\u2019s wonderful. It\u2019s like, \u2018Hello.\u2019 I can\u2019t wait. If the sun pops out, which it\u2019s going to, it\u2019s going to pop in and out, it\u2019ll be really interesting. I can show that that\u2019s happening in the water. I\u2019m going to keep this one loose and fresh.\u201d<\/p>\n

She named it \u201cWaking Spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been doing this forever, and it\u2019s just been such a privilege and an honor,\u201d Pettis said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a bad gig to be looking for beauty in the world as your main vocation and avocation, that\u2019s for sure. My motivation is just the beauty of the world. Nature is so giving, and it\u2019s so hard to take the time to listen to her. But when we\u2019re out on location, nature just keeps unveiling her secrets. As you sit there, you have time for all the layers to dissolve, and you go in the zone. It\u2019s a meditation, and after doing it for 50 years, I feel like I finally speak the language.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary Pettis artwork<\/p>\n

Mary Pettis showcases her available works in her gallery, Gallery 366, located within the Northrup King Building in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

For more information, go to marypettis.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Landscape artist Mary Pettis is walking along the St. Croix River in Interstate State Park just south of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":788388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1037,648,1032,1033,171,2824,322161,1072,67,132,68,8838],"class_list":{"0":"post-788387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-outdoors","14":"tag-st-croix-river","15":"tag-things-to-do","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-washington-county"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116555097862794290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}