Born in 1951, Mary Jane Q. Cross’s life was a life full of questions and a yearning for order. This was the underpinning of Cross’s future career as a Classical Realism painter whose large body of work is marked by logic, cohesion, and an aura of storytelling that is poetic and consoling.
As a Worcester Art Museum School art student in the 1970’s, Cross was a ‘closet Realist’ as she endured the era’s dominant mantle of Expressionism. Reading of formal artists with her shared realism vision – DaVinci, Sargent, Bouguereau, Godward, Mary Cassatt -- was a point of encouragement at this time. Studying such painters, among other Masters of earlier centuries, inspired Cross in her personal quest to acquire the skills of Classical painting.
After 40-plus years of this visual journey, Cross continues to produce a body of work that presents a sense of needed and appreciated refreshment in the midst of modernity’s fast pace. Cross’s resonant theme is of respectfully uncovering the many complex layers of women. Appealing to both women and men alike, her work presents women’s beauty as a deep comfort and a restful joy, when idealistically and, perhaps, Biblically examined. In a contemporary culture that perceives the sexuality of women in an increasingly objectified manner, Cross’s work offers a breath of hope. Her work presents a delicate beauty that she believes young women, in particular, are actually striving for – a beauty that, in the artist’s opinion, reflects an image of women as God intended them to be: Creation’s crowning jewels.
“If you do not have life, you cannot give life,” states Cross. “If my work has anything, it has an authentic response to life. My paintings are stories. They depict the quiet rest that comes to a soul only after it has determined to deal with circumstances head-on, with grace and tact instead of grumbling and complaining. My paintings reflect and inspire a determination to focus on beauty, even in the midst of ashes. This is something I have had to live.”
For the past 21 years, a serious right-sided tremor has limited Cross’s ability to hold a brush. Thus, Cross paints with her fingers; whatever minimal brush strokes the artist employs are guided by a prosthetic device. A documentary titled Q. Cross: The Painter behind the Portraits, on youtube, click to view Documentary details her journey back to painting in the after-years of the tremor’s on-set. The artist has also compiled a book, Poems of a Painter, Paintings of a Prayer, in which she speaks of how she has come to deal with this physical challenge that she cannot change and, yet, has witnessed a greater dream come out of what were initially tragic circumstances.
The simultaneous heartache and joy that Cross experiences daily is seen in her paintings – and it is heard in the poems that she writes as an accompaniment to each of her works. The combined presentation of painted image and printed word has enriched the meaning of her work.
The public is a telling barometer of the penetrating resonance of the artist’s work. Cross’s paintings are regularly displayed by the Art Renewal Center Salon Exhibitions (where Cross is an ARC Associate Living Master), click for ARC Masters Gallery the International Guild of Realism (where she was awarded Best of Show in 2013), the American Society of Traditional Artists, the Salmagundi Club, and the Allied Artists of America.
As many as 30,000 people a year also view Cross’s work at outdoor venues. Viewers who cannot afford the originals are still enthusiastically pleased to own limited edition prints. Collectors who can afford these multi-faceted jewels get to live with a palpable part of Cross’s personal vision, crafted with her personal touch.
Mary Jane Q. Cross www.maryjaneqcross.com builds a body of memorable work in a studio, built by her husband and hugged by New England’s quiet countryside, as she threads the fabric that mirrors her own life into her work. Her quest is a worthy one.
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