Getting My Hands Dirty with Mary Lowry’s Style
So, I wanted to share something I tried recently. It all started when I stumbled across the name Mary Lowry. Wasn’t someone famous, not really. I saw a couple of her paintings tucked away in a dusty corner of a local community center gallery. Nothing grand, just simple landscapes, but something about them just grabbed me.
It was the way she used light, I think. And the colors felt very… real. Not hyper-realistic, just honest, you know? Anyway, I stood there for a good while, just looking. Then I got this idea – maybe I could try painting something like that? I haven’t painted much since I was a kid, messing around with watercolors, but I thought, why not?
First off, I had to get some stuff together. Found my old set of acrylic paints in the garage, mostly dried up. Had to run out and buy a few new tubes, nothing fancy, just the basics. Grabbed a cheap canvas board too. Didn’t want to invest much in case it was a total disaster.
Then came the actual doing part. I set up in the shed, put down some newspaper because I remembered painting gets messy. I tried to recall those paintings by Mary Lowry. I didn’t take pictures, just tried to capture the feeling. I started trying to mix greens for some trees. Man, that was harder than I thought. Got mud colors, weird bright greens, everything but what I wanted. It was pretty frustrating.
- Squeezed out too much blue.
- Then added way too much yellow trying to fix it.
- Ended up with this weird neon green.
- Scraped some off, tried again.
I spent maybe an hour just trying to get a decent green. Then I moved on to the sky. Tried to get that soft light effect I saw in her work. More mixing, more dabbing, more wiping away. My hands were covered in paint, the newspaper was soaked through in spots.
Honestly, there were moments I just wanted to chuck the whole thing. It looked nothing like her calm paintings. Mine was looking like a chaotic mess. But I kept at it, bit by bit. Added some darker bits for shadows, some lighter bits where the sun might hit. Didn’t really follow any rules, just went with what felt right, trying to remember those paintings.
After a couple of hours, I stepped back. It wasn’t a Mary Lowry, not even close. It was rough, clumsy, the perspective was a bit wonky. But you know what? It wasn’t terrible either. There was a tree, there was a sky, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of that light I was chasing. It felt good, actually finishing it.
Made me appreciate Mary Lowry’s skill a whole lot more. Making something look simple and effortless takes a ton of work and know-how. My little experiment wasn’t about creating a masterpiece, it was just about trying, about getting my hands dirty and connecting with something that caught my eye. And I did that.
