Elevating ‘The Lowly’

It's a rare person without an imprint on the Internet these days, especially when you're Googling a prolific artist, longtime university professor and a pioneer in Las Vegas' forever-burgeoning artistic community.

Someone like that should have a moderate public profile, at the least.

But do an online search for Mary Warner, Las Vegas artist, and you won't find much beyond her University of Nevada, Las Vegas bio. There are links to sites where you can purchase her paintings, but no Wikipedia entry, no Web site or extensive biography, nothing about the influences on her body of work and few tributes to her place in the valley's artistic world.

Warner, 60, wouldn't have it any other way.

"I love being invisible in that way," says Warner, whose "Angels and Insects" exhibit opens at Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery on campus June 19. "Under the radar, for me, is the most comfortable place to be."

Don't misunderstand her. At first glance, she comes across as unassuming, with her silver-gray hair, gentle blue eyes and a figure kept trim with swimming and walks to and from the bus stop. But have a conversation with her and that impression will change. Warner is far from simple and anything but meek.

Thoughtful, opinionated and charming, Warner possesses an independent sensibility that can only be described as Western, which isn't surprising since she was born into a Northern California family that goes back five generations. Her hometown is near a mountain range called the Warner Mountains.

That Western attitude is responsible for her moving to Las Vegas in 1989.

After graduating from California State University, Sacramento, with a master's degree in art, she spent time teaching and working in Montana, Wyoming, Chicago, New York and Texas. She was invited to come to UNLV as a visiting artist.

"When I got back here, I felt I had missed the West so much," Warner says. "And the dryness, it felt like my habitat. I thought I would just stay and I stayed."

Warner is an associate professor and the graduate coordinator for UNLV's art department. Along with faculty and students, she was instrumental in the creation of the Contemporary Arts Collective, a place where professionals could network and support one another.

For the past 20 years, she has balanced teaching with painting in her UNLV studio and at home. Her early work is almost all narrative, but she is most known for botanical drawings and paintings of bees on flowers, butterflies, delicate blossoms in pastel hues, all literal interpretations of a world that exists mostly in her backyard.

"For me, working with botanical subjects is about as abstract as it's going to get," says Warner.

Her interest in outsider art has influenced much of her work. Flowers are hardly the subject matter of outsiders in the art world but Warner strives to elevate what she calls "the lowly," materials that others have rejected as amateur or unrefined.

"I like questioning. Just because something is a certain medium, I don't believe it can't be used to create something with emotional resonance," Warner says. "I test assumptions."

Black velvet and water color paints are two examples. A few years ago, Warner started painting on black velvet, creating portraits with an almost three-dimensional feel to them. Black velvet is considered lowbrow, she says, but she was inspired to use it by childhood memories of the county fair, where she saw artwork done with black velvet.

Water colors are considered a hobbyist's medium. But Warner finds them challenging and works with them often.

Warner had a different view of the world early on in life, seeing it upside down and backward. As a child, she was diagnosed with dyslexia and her mother worked intensely to help her to overcome it. The oldest of six, Warner got into art to escape her family, to experience some peaceful moments that weren't filled with the sounds of children and household activities.

"There was really a lot of activity so making a world, a narrative on a piece of paper, was somewhere I had some control. I could block anything out," she explains.

She was always drawn to nature, painting animals and botanicals early on and that is still the case.

Warner lives in the southeast part of the valley with two cats and a three-legged dog left behind by her daughter when she went away to college.

She hopes to retire from UNLV within the next five years so that she can concentrate on her art.

One of her goals? "To live long enough so that I can own my own dog. Some kind of terrier."

Contact reporter Sonya Padgett at spadgett@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4564.