Mary Sims is celebrated for extraordinary, stylized oil paintings based on both real and invented environments. She worked daily in her studio, and over the course of her lifelong career, produced an array of intricate landscapes, whimsical still-lifes, captivating portraits and spectacular narrative scenes. Recognized not only for her elegant composition of flat forms, juxtapositions of symbol and content, affinity for texture and detail and flawless final execution, her perceptive intelligence and wild spirit distinguished her legacy. Inspired by classical history, mythology and Biblical stories, Sims’ methodical process for many of her works entangled friends, family and imagery from memories and dreams into her own subversions of history painting. Her meticulously constructed settings, which she arranged, then photographed, featured casts of costumed characters and were abundant with flowers, fabrics, decorative objects and ironic details. Sims placed particular attention on her subjects’ eyes as the representations of their souls. With astonishing scale and stunning use of color, her works produce a hypnotic effect on viewers, linking their present experience to a more mystical past.
Mary Sims was considered a Memphis painter although she lived and worked in Eureka Springs, Arkansas for the majority of her life. She was the first woman accepted into the printmaking department at the University of Iowa, where she received a BFA. She did further studies in Rome and then received her MFA from Tulane University. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she taught art at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College). Her work was frequently exhibited in the region and far beyond, including at her long-term dealers in Houston, Tulsa, Los Angeles and New York. Her work is in the collections of major private and public collections including John Grisham, Mary Tyler Moore and Burt Reynolds, as well as the Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; The Assisi Foundation, Memphis; First Tennessee Bank, Memphis; the Kemper Collection, Kansas City; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; nexAir, Memphis; Rhodes College, Memphis; and the Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, among others.
