A retrospective exhibition by Mary Austin

If Victoria Wood had been an artist rather than a writer, she would probably have produced work like Mary Austin’s, capturing the humour and poignancy of everyday life. Mary studied at Brighton School of Art in the early 60s and started her career as an illustrator.  During a varied career, she always carried sketchbooks to capture images of people, especially in Loughborough and Sileby. From around the late 90s she began to explore monoprinting and working over these with other media to produce the works at this exhibition; images of life in a pub, shopping or gossiping, all based on material in her sketchbooks. Many of her works were based on literature, and the series of multi-media illustrations of “Under Milk Wood” represents an outstanding imaginative achievement.

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