From the misty forests of the Pacific Northwest to the mesas of Santa Fe, artist Mary Alayne Thomas creates dreamlike worlds where nature, memory, and imagination meet.
Raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico, by two working artists, Mary Alayne Thomas grew up surrounded by creativity. She began illustrating children's magazines at eleven years old, developing an early love for watercolor. Over time, her practice evolved to incorporate encaustic, a medium made from beeswax and tree resin, which she layers over her watercolor paintings to create soft, atmospheric works. Now based in Portland, Oregon, Mary's work draws inspiration from the wildlife, forests, and beauty of the Pacific Northwest, while continuing to reflect the landscapes of her childhood.
We caught up with Mary to talk about her creative process, the relationship between humans and the natural world, and what it means to transform her paintings into immersive wallpaper murals for Artscape.
Can you tell us a bit about your creative practice and the mediums you work with most often? How did you arrive at this way of working?
My journey as an artist began with the illustrated children’s books I grew up with. I had a series called “My Book House,” and the illustrators within were from the golden age of illustration. I was obsessed with the images of Walter Crane, Arthur Rakham, Jesse Wilcox Smith, and especially John Williams Waterhouse. To this day, I still turn to those same books for inspiration! I love the directness in which these artists capture a slice of unreality. I feel like you can see echoes of that inspiration in all my work. I begin my work as a graphite sketch, giving form and creating a composition. I then create a line drawing with ink and brush, creating an illustrative outline and some shading, which I then fill with watercolor. I then coat the painting with encaustic, which is beeswax mixed with tree resin. The encaustic creates a dreamy window into the painting, filtering it through its hazy glow, which mirrors the way I look upon my favorite illustrations- through the hazy lens of time. I’ve painted with this method for over a decade, but each time I pick up a brush, the paint teaches me something new. Each one of these mediums on their own can be very hard to control, but somehow these extremely fragile and chaotic mediums come together to make something very serene. With these mediums, you have to give up the idea of control. Letting go of control can be very hard, but it always leads to the best results.
Where do you find inspiration outside of the studio? How have the landscapes you've lived in influenced your work?
Nature increasingly guides all that I do. I grew up wandering the mesas of Santa Fe NM. Some time ago, I moved to the mysterious, foggy forest that is Portland OR. There is a deep beauty that dwells within each of these locations, and I am so lucky to have experienced their very different, but equally captivating landscapes. My move to the Pacific Northwest led to scenes of greater magnitude which play in the periphery of my imagination. I want to feel as surrounded by nature in my paintings as I do in these vast, wild woods. Their enigmatic, moody qualities have crept into my work more and more over time. I’ve begun creating larger and larger works, expanding my paintings to try to catch all that I see and feel, as I attempt to illustrate the oneness of all life. As the world outside grows more chaotic, my need for the strength and wisdom that I gain from nature grows.
I credit my father, who was a master at capturing the essence of wildlife in his own artwork, with the gift of looking at the world in this way. He was the type of person who would nearly drive off the road to point out a beautiful cloud formation in the sky. Once you look at the world through that lens, it never really goes away. Your adult life will screech to a halt to watch a chickadee bath in a birdbath.
Now seems the most important time to remember how beautiful the world can be. My advice to anyone hoping to cultivate their artistic side is to go out into the natural world every day.
How do ideas usually begin for you? Do they emerge through observation, sketches, color, or something less tangible?
My ideas often begin as an emotion, or mood, something very enigmatic which can be difficult to translate into a visual design. Many times it's a feeling directly related to an experience I’ve had in the wild world, but a beautiful color combination, or even a song can prompt a vision for a painting. It can be a very big challenge to translate this into a two dimensional scene.
For example, I once spent a quiet morning sitting alongside a stream in the Olympic National Forest. I noticed an animal scurrying across the river bank, which upon closer inspection, I realized was a small, silky mink fishing in the freezing stream. For almost an hour we shared this space, as I watched him pull out one fish after another, storing them all in a small shelter behind him. As butterflies (and bats!) drifted by, the dreamy landscape tricked me into thinking I was just another mink, a visitor in this small creature’s world.
Wanting to somehow capture this sensation led to several paintings where a mink lovingly inhabits the same space as its companion. Perhaps it is a woman with a mink on her shoulder, as they both ponder the beauty in an apple. But they all began with the feeling I experienced, when I was privy to a scene that filled me with mysterious and beautiful wonder.
Animals appear throughout your paintings, often in close relationship with people. Can you share how they became part of your broader visual language?
Animals entered my process very early on, and they are still a subject I find continually captivating. There is a visual component to animals that's undeniable - a dash of orange and the richness of fur calls for a fox, a vivid blue and the sleekness of feathers calls for a heron. But there is also a symbolic component. It’s not uncommon to see animals and women entwined in my paintings, in perfect harmony. Although wild animals are often seen as ferocious or merely illusive, I think of animals as an expression of our inner selves. There are parts of our hearts that want to fly, run and growl, and animals give expression to this.
I also want to create a vision where we call to the wild world, and the plants and animals lovingly respond. We live in precarious times. Some might say at a tipping point. This natural world that I try to communicate with my artwork is in very real danger. With my paintings, I hope to draw people into the natural world so that they confront their own vulnerability at this time, to create images that stress the importance of connection, both with our own wildness, and the wildness of the natural world.
What was it like translating your paintings into wallpaper murals with Artscape? How did working at this larger scale influence the way you imagine people experiencing your art?
When I was a child I lived in books and dreamed of other worlds. I would always make up my own stories, and they would invariably involve access to another land, one filled with all the beauty I always experienced through reading.
One of the most exciting aspects of creating a mural of this size and scale, is the perception that you could walk right into a fantasy land not unlike my favorite childhood characters. It's amazing to feel that my wallpaper could be that portal for people in their own homes!
Bringing Mary's World Into Your Home
There's something wonderfully fitting about Mary's paintings finding their way onto walls. Her work has always invited viewers into imagined landscapes, places where animals and humans coexist, where the natural world feels close enough to touch, and where the boundaries between reality and fantasy soften.
Through her collaboration with Artscape, those worlds can now become part of the spaces we inhabit every day, offering a little wonder, a connection to nature, and an invitation to get lost in the details.
