Mary Younkin's current focus has been on creating figurative paintings and drawings inspired by a growing collection of found photos. Photographs allow her a launching point from which to enhance narratives of family, relationship, color, and expression in the medium of painting and drawing. Generally said to have a nostalgic or timeless feel, the figures in her work have become, for her, a sort of album. Her choices of color, pattern, and composition create scenes which are awkwardly happy. ThereÕs a factitious quality which invites the viewer in to participate in the curiosity.

Mary has experience working with a variety of mediums including oil painting, acrylics, graphite, pen & ink, woodcut, and monotype.

Mary Younkin is a bay area transplant from Orange County, CA. She graduated with distinction from the California College of the Arts in 2004. She proudly lives and works in Oakland, and is grateful for the love and support she has found in the East Bay.

I am for an art that embroils itself in the everyday crap & still
comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary,
or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for an art that takes its forms from the life itself, that twists
and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is
heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life
itself.

-Claes Oldenburg