In order to make a meaningful painting I have to establish form somewhere in the swirl of line, texture and color. I find it difficult to breathe new life into a brush stroke but can charge expression into/out of these uniform lines though process that comes from alternately working line within, around and through the field. This process integrates and embeds the line and keeps it from being simply a design element. It draws the space. The many stages are visible and are there for the viewer to read. Consistent in most of these paintings is the underlying evidence of previous stages of "failed paintings" rising to the surface through layers built up, scraped down, enriching the final version.
Mary Didoardo is a long-time resident of Long Island City, NY. She was born in New Jersey and has lived in New York City since graduating from Pratt Institute where she studied sculpture. Her paintings manifest a physical and process-driven sensibility oriented in early explorations with materials. She has had two solo shows at the Kathryn Markel Gallery in 2016 and 2019. Posit Online Journal: Issue #26 featured her work in January 2021. Her work was represented in “ROY G BIV,” a 3-person exhibition in 2018 at the Chautauqua Institute. She is a two-time recipient of The Enrico Donati Foundation Grant. Her work was reviewed in Too Much Art, Writings on Visual Culture by Mario Naves, who wrote: “Didoardo’s abstractions are characterized by a bracing sense of freedom. They evince an artist working not only with an enviable surety, but one welcoming of risk – which, of course, puts surety to the test. That approach may be standard operating procedure for certain strains of abstract painting, but it’s one thing to make the claim, another to pull it off. Didoardo pulls it off, and then some.”