We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mary Simon-Casati a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Mary, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I grew up on a farm and learned how to be efficient, work hard and persist when I made mistakes.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
The farm where I spent my childhood was located in the middle of the great plains, where I experienced a sea of waving grasses. The sky is very big on the prairie- seeing clouds and light create shapes and shadows fleeting across the land and sky led me to explore the science behind these natural phenomena. One thing led to another and soon I was reading physics books for lay people to help me understand how energy works. It is not possible to learn about energy without learning a bit about light and the stars. To learn that we humans and everything we know here on Earth once came from the stars is truly awesome. To me these are worthy subjects to paint. I want my paintings to shimmer and glow. I want my paintings to express the complexities of simple. Currently, I am working on a new body of work I am calling, The Stars Are Everywhere. Milky Way Garden is one of those paintings.
One of my greatest pleasures is being immersed in creating a painting, from the research I do about what is visible to what is unseen-something like the energy that is behind the subject matter that interests me. Finally, the joy of painting. Another great pleasure for me is seeing a person walk out of my studio with a painting they just love that I made because they have connected with my work on a deep level.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Working consistently every day, daydreaming a lot, and researching how things work helped me hone skills to communicate what I am trying to express. Best advice is to be persistent, do not give up, keep in mind what you want to express and get comfortable with failing, it is the first step in succeeding-try again and again.
Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
Finding a mentor was extremely helpful to me in understanding details of oil painting concepts. She helped me see things in my paintings that I was too close to the work to see.
She asked challenging questions about my work, insisted on answers, but never told me how to solve a color or composition problem. That forced me to examine and re-examine again and again my work.
She encouraged me to move out of my comfort zone to enter competitions and was instrumental in helping me win a grant.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mscasati.com
Image Credits
Photographer: Keith Miesel
