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| | ARTIST NAME: | Kerr, Mary | | ACCESSION NUMBER: | 2016.025.001 | | TITLE: | SAGUAROS & PALO VERDE, MESA, ARIZONA | | DATE: | 1977 | | CATEGORY: | Painting | | MEDIUM: | oil | | SUPPORT: | panel | | DIMENSIONS: | Actual: 30 × 40 cm (11 13/16 × 15 3/4 in.) | | COLLECTION: | Alberta Foundation for the Arts |
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| | OTHER HOLDINGS: | Kerr, Mary | | ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: |
Mary (nee Spice) Kerr was born in Yorkton, Saskatchewan in 1905. Educated in English and library science, she became a high school teacher in Yorkton before studying art and literature at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. She later went to England, where she did her Master of Arts thesis on the effects of the Depression on the novel. In London she made the re-acquaintance of the Alberta artist Illingworth (Buck) Kerr, whom she had previously met in Regina. At the time, Kerr was involved with film-making and supporting himself as a writer for Blackwoods magazine, and Mary, who was a skilled typist and editor, began helping him with his work. Their relationship grew and the pair married in Ontario in 1938. They spent their early married life in France before returning to Canada during the first years of the war. Making their home in Vancouver, Mary Kerr worked as a librarian at the University of British Columbia and served as Secretary of the Federation of Canadian Artists. After the couple moved to Calgary in 1947, where Buck Kerr had been appointed head of the Art Department of the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art (later the Alberta College of Art and Design), she worked at the Calgary Public Library. In Calgary, too, she began experimenting with art-making.
Mary Kerr took instruction in ceramics at the Institute and became reasonably skilled as a ceramist. As a painter, however, she was mostly self-taught. She was, of course, exposed to a rich art-making milieu through her marriage to Illingworth Kerr and her contact with the other teachers and students at the art school. In addition, as Kerr's wife, she was able to accompany him on painting expeditions throughout Western Canada and also on trips to Arizona, where she did some of her best work. She was a natural artist whose favourite subjects included landscapes, flowers, and animals and who might have earned a substantial reputation as an artist. She chose, however, to devote more of her energies to support the career of her husband than to fully develop her own, and her exhibiting record was consequently limited.
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