Thanks to my very creative mother, Rita M. Simmons (1921-2004), my childhood was steeped in a variety of creative enterprises and the permission to make messes. She faced it, back in the 1950’s: creativity is untidy. She even organized a neighborhood puppet-making project in our garage that engaged the children of the whole neighborhood.
She painted. I opt for the third dimension. Far and away from my childhood steeped in the odors of oil paint and turpentine, my mother’s paintings inspired me from the hidden places of memory and imagination. I put my hands in clay and evoke the landscape, the dancer, the flowers that grace the Earth. As she, my mother, did before me, on the flat canvasses of her vision.
The paintings and ceramic sculptures herein were part of a recent art show at the Church of Art, in Hotchkiss, Colorado.
In 1999, I received a Master of Science degree in geology, which also has exerted a profound influence on my art, both in design inspiration and technique (see…Making Paint from the Desert Landscape & Bones of Earth, Bones of Clay…)
I taught geology for 4 years in Indiana, and spent the summers in dry New Mexico, where the Cylinder Series happened, 22 of them, comprised of high-fired stoneware and porcelain.
My latest passion in ceramic art: bright, beautiful colors and intricate textures in low-fired earthenware clay.
At last, I am painting. Like my mother, who by her example, made my life an open space for art.
Thanks, Mom.
Mary C Simmons ... Art and Word 
How lovely is your story, Mary, and your self-portrait, your ceramics & your lovely new bowls. How fortunate to have grown up with an artistic mother. My mom was creative with decorating, flower arranging, but I have come to painting with no history of it, and late in life. I loved this post.
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Thank you, Linda! I am happy to know this post touched you.
The self portrait is my mother’s—when she was about 30, a few years before I was born. She was a prolific painter in oil, then acrylics then watercolor.
Keep on Painting!
mary
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