Exhibitions

MARY SIMS: ALL OF A PIECE

David Lusk Gallery Memphis / 97 Tillman September 28, 2018 - November 17, 2018

Mary Sims

Celebrated for her extraordinary, stylized oil paintings based on real and invented environments, Mary Sims was inspired by classical history, mythology and Biblical stories. Sims’s methodical process for many of her works entangled friends, family and imagery from memories and dreams into her own subversions of history painting. Mary Sims was considered a Memphis painter although she lived and worked in Eureka Springs, Arkansas for the majority of her life. She was the first woman accepted into the printmaking department at the University of Iowa, where she received a BFA. She did further studies in Rome and then received her MFA from Tulane University. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she taught art at Southwestern in Memphis (now Rhodes College). Her work was frequently exhibited in the region and far beyond, including at her long-term dealers in Houston, Tulsa, Los Angeles and New York. Her work is in the collections of major private and public collections.