Mary Littlefield
Mary Littlefield is a multimedia artist based in Norfolk, working across painting, sculpture, printmaking, textile, drawing, installation, mixed media and collage.
She has made things since childhood, knitting, sewing, designing gardens and painting. She studied Art History and English at university and then had a long career as a civil servant and lecturer, creating in her spare time and attending art classes in the evenings through adult education. On retiring she began a part-time Foundation course at the University of Bangor, which started her path as a practising artist, and on moving to Norfolk she became part of the Art Depot NR3 Collective and of The Lonely Arts Club in Norwich.
She exhibits with the collective and in open exhibitions, mostly across East Anglia, and has had a solo show. She has shown at Anteros Arts Foundation in Norwich, at Art Depot studios and on the Raveningham sculpture trail.
Artist Statement
I am interested in People: how we emerged on this planet, how we evolved, why we tamed animals, built cities, went to war with each other and how we created culture and ritual. Human beings are the only living creatures that have the power to consciously transform the world around them. We live every day with the consequences of the choices of our ancestors. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do?
My work is about sex, death, birth and ritual. Culture from the past revisited in the present.
I work intuitively with materials that I find - or find me. I make totem figures, constructions and painted work using materials that have been thrown away or repurposed. You will find mud, seaweed, plastic spoons, baking twine, packaging, string, plant fibres, house paint, metal and shells in my work. From the dawn of culture we used flint and ochre, wood, bone, skin, shell and charcoal to make and draw. The detritus of today's life are my tools.
Recent themes have been around the destruction of communities by wild fires, body shapes and the voids left by images cut from photographs.