About
Artist | Educator | Restless Soul
Mary Larsen
Mary Larsen was raised in New York City where she developed an early interest in art while attending an art magnet high school. She studied printmaking and film making at Hampshire College and after a successful career as an art director, completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Florida International University.
Larsen is a mixed-media artist whose work explores transformation, memory, and materiality. She reclaims discarded books, her older paintings and obsolete media, layering paint, ink, maps, and found images to create dreamlike compositions that reflect impermanence and emotional resonance. Through a meditative process of erasure and mark-making, her pieces become palimpsests—spaces where histories are rewritten and identity is reimagined. Her practice is a quiet rebellion against disposability and a celebration of the tactile and the layered nature of experience.
Larsen’s work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, San Juan, Miami and Kyoto. Her work is in corporate and individual collections in New York, Miami, and San Juan. Her altered books are in the special collections at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, the University of Miami, Florida International University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She was a recipient of the Ellies award in 2019 and 2025.
Larsen Artist statement
My work is rooted in transformation and process—of materials, memories, and meaning. As both a discipline and a philosophy, I reclaim discarded books and obsolete media, rescuing them from the margins of utility and giving them new life. This act of renewal is both ecological and emotional: a way of letting go, reimagining, and honoring what once was.
To embody this philosophy, I often revisit older works—cutting, painting over, and integrating fragments of the past into new compositions. These layered pieces speak to impermanence and evolution, allowing history to bleed into the present in subtle, expressive ways.
Through a meditative process of layering paint, ink, found images, maps, and printmaking, I construct dreamlike worlds that unfold across ethereal terrains. These works become palimpsests—spaces where histories are erased and rewritten, and where the real and imagined converge. Disparate elements interact to form an atmosphere of fragmentation and beauty, finding harmony through imbalance and dissonance.
This interplay of contrast—between memory and perception, obscuring and revealing, erasure and mark-making—creates a dynamic tension. Each piece becomes a narrative in flux, slowly emerging and dissolving, mirroring the layered nature of subconscious thought.
By reengaging with discarded media and my own artistic history, I aim to evoke emotional resonance and explore how materials can transcend their original context. My work is a quiet rebellion against disposability, a celebration of the tactile, and a reflection on the layered complexity of identity and experience.