Mary Kay West Fine Art

Mary Kay is a native of Asheville, North Carolina.  She was encouraged from the earliest age to express her creative and artistic nature and began painting under the guidance of her mother, a watercolor artist.  But other interests in psychology and eastern thought led her to pursue a career in Clinical and Educational Psychology and later Yoga Instruction and Yoga Therapy.  It wasn't until 2003 that her life as an artist began when she was admitted to the Fine Arts League of Asheville with Master Artists Ben Long and John MacKah.  She completed studies in classical drawing and painting in 2007 and moved to California to paint full time.  Mary Kay specializes in sharp focus still life, birds, and more recently trompe l'oeil.  Her work has been described as timeless, vibrant and masterful.  Her work can be seen in American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena, Classic Art Gallery in Carmel and Portico Gallery in Santa Barbara California as well as the permanent collection at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin.  She currently lives and works in Guadalupe, California and teaches painting classes in Los Alamos and Santa Barbara, California.



Articles and Press 

"Viewing the glorious works of Mary Kay West is truly a gracious and beautiful feast for the eyes.  Her classic realist images in oil are masterful and convey a timeless quality the reaches further than that of traditional still life and landscape compositions.  Each painting reveals a skill full touch in which a marvelous technique unveils a richness and vibrancy to her art"
Kathrine Koeing, City Sun Times


"Mary Kay is a classical still life and landscape painter.  Her still life work is crisp and vibrant, detailed and realistic.  Her landscapes, while looser in style, are equally bent toward reflecting the reality she sees and carries within herself." 
Tony Reynolds, 2009