Aging Auratum

Surrounded by paintings. Surrounded by color. My eyes traveled from painting to painting, taking me to new places. Finally, I landed at home. Titanium white spread on with a palette knife, with burst of colors painted with a dry brush. I was drawn to Autumn Lilies like a magnet to metal. I saw myself taking the brush from Mary G. L. Hood. I saw myself painting this painting.

In 1886 Mary Gibbons Lawson Hood was born in Honey Brook, Pennsylvania, on August 30 to William Gibbons and Agnes Gaston Lawson (Philadelphia Modernism 38). In 1907 Mary married Albert L. Hood on March 2 at her parents’ home (Philadelphia Modernism 38). “Mary G. L. Hood attended The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts directly out of high school in 1903, but curtailed her studies to marry and raise her four children” (Tow). “Her second experience at the Academy began in 1929 when her eldest child, Agnes graduated from Swarthmore College” (Tow). Dissatisfied with the Academy’s conservative climate, Mary Hood left after a year to study with Henry McCarter and then Arthur B. Carles whose teachings encouraged an individual expression of ideas and emotions with vigorous color and abstraction (Tow). “During the summers of 1937 and 1938, she also studied with Charles W. Ward whose modernist landscapes of Bucks County would exert a strong influence in their landscapes” (Tow). “Mary Hood and Agnes Hood Miller were given a dual “Mother and Daughter” exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in December of 1941, their last exhibition in Philadelphia until now” (Tow). Later that year, Mary G. L. Hood and her family purchased a farm in Springdale, near New Hope (Philadelphia Modernism 41). “There, Hood worked in her studio every afternoon painting the beautiful flo...

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...y G. L. Hood’s life, I came to find that our connections ran deep. “Hood wrote that she had been ‘especially fond of art’ since childhood” (Wolanin 15). Like Hood I too have been interested in art since childhood. Since the age of eight I have been creating my own signature style — exploring colors and brush strokes. Hood is an inspiration to me, although she started off so young, her paintings ended up in a museum. Hood’s story has taught me that I can succeed in anything that I have a passion for.

Works Cited

Hood, Mary G. L. . Autumn Lilies. 1994. Oil on canvas. Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia.

Tow, Hidly. Message to Suzie Heiczinger. 27 September 2011. E-mail.

Wolanin, Barbara A.. Dykstra, Gretchen, ed. Mary G. L. Hood and Philadelphia Modernism. n.p.: Woodmere Art Museum, 2011. Print.