Visual Language Magazine Contemporary Fine Art March 2014 Vol 3 No 3

VL
Studio Visit
Mary Jane Q Cross
Born in 1951, Mary Jane Q. Cross’s life was a life full of questions and a yearning for order. This
was the underpinning of Cross’s future career as a Classical Realism painter whose large body of
work is marked by logic, cohesion, and an aura of storytelling that is poetic and consoling.
As a Worcester Art Museum School art student in the 1970’s, Cross was a ‘closet Realist’ as she
endured the era’s dominant mantle of Expressionism. Reading of formal artists with her shared
realism vision – DaVinci, Sargent, Bouguereau, Godward, Mary Cassatt -- was a point of encouragement
at this time. Studying such painters, among other Masters of earlier centuries, inspired
Cross in her personal quest to acquire the skills of Classical painting.
After 40-plus years of this visual journey, Cross continues to produce a body of work that presents
a sense of needed and appreciated refreshment in the midst of modernity’s fast pace. Cross’s resonant
theme is of respectfully uncovering the many complex layers of women. Appealing to both
women and men alike, her work presents women’s beauty as a deep comfort and a restful joy,
when idealistically and, perhaps, Biblically examined. In a contemporary culture that perceives the
sexuality of women in an increasingly objectified manner, Cross’s work offers a breath of hope. Her
work presents a delicate beauty that she believes young women, in particular, are actually striving
for – a beauty that, in the artist’s opinion, reflects an image of women as God intended them to be:
Creation’s crowning jewels.
“If you do not have life, you cannot give life,” states Cross. “If my work has anything, it has an authentic
response to life. My paintings are stories. They depict the quiet rest that comes to a soul
only after it has determined to deal with circumstances head-on, with grace and tact instead of
grumbling and complaining. My paintings reflect and inspire a determination to focus on beauty,
even in the midst of ashes. This is something I have had to live.”
http://www.maryjaneqcross.com/
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