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Watercolors by Mary

Your Home Is a Work of Art

There is no home like the one you've got
'Cause that home belongs to you

– "Barking at the Moon" by Jenny Lewis

Mary Ostazeski Johnson paints houses. “The poor woman,” you might be thinking to yourself. “Scaling rickety ladders all day long in the hot Minnesota sun, precariously extending a roller brush just to slap a fresh coat of New London Burgundy on someone else’s house.” But you’ve got it all wrong. The Eden Prairie artist paints houses, immortalizing them as idyllic watercolors which are as one of a kind as their occupants.

“Idyllic” is no exaggeration. Whether Mary paints an American Craftsman, Dutch Colonial, Greek Revival or simple ranch-style house, she makes it look like a place which storybook characters would be eager to return to following some grand adventure. There is a certain softness to Mary’s style, an indescribable quantum of love within every brushstroke that causes her subjects to glow like they’re the greatest buildings on earth. And to her clients, they are.

Mary thanks her high school art teacher Mel Kumsha for her love of painting. He appreciated her talent and created a special class just for her. “Oil, acrylic, watercolor – paint however you would like to in the studio behind my classroom, Mary, and I will give you school credit,” he said to his eager young pupil. Rather than grade Mary’s work at the end of the semester, he framed it and sold it at auction to raise $2,000 for the school.

If we only consider the number of paintings they each sold in their lifetimes, then Mary became a more successful painter than Vincent van Gogh before graduating high school. She has twice as many ears, too.

“I was promised a job by the owner of a greeting card company once I finished my year abroad in Yugoslavia,” said Mary. “But when I got back he withdrew his offer. He told me that my art was too personal, and that I should do something like offer to paint people’s houses in watercolor. I was angry at him at first, but then I decided to take his advice. I’ve painted about 8,000 homes since then, as well as boats, classic cars, lakeside cabins, hunting shacks, ice fishing huts – anything that could be precious to someone.

“I paint in a style I developed myself, not one I was taught, and over the years my paintings have gotten brighter and more detailed. I love to capture the grain of a home’s wood, the shading of its stone. Texture means everything in my very specific genre of art. I’ve also become increasingly obsessed with lines – I love lines. And yet I try to preserve the element of the washiness of watercolor as well. 

“Watercolor is a difficult medium to work in. It has a tendency to get away from you at times, so you have to have a playful personality. If a single drip doesn’t destroy your painting, you can turn it into a flower pot, a fencepost, the branch of a tree, anything really. A mistake becomes an opportunity if you’re spontaneous. I suppose I wouldn’t have made a good brain surgeon with that mindset.

“I’ve had people criticize my work, saying it’s not art – that it’s ‘just drawing,’ or ‘copying what’s already there.’ But my clients really do appreciate my attention to detail in replicating their homes, especially when I only had photos of bits and pieces to work with. And I’m happy to embellish a little, removing satellite dishes and downspouts or adding children making snowmen and pets peering out the window. You probably wouldn’t be surprised by how many people would like their neighbor’s house absent from their painting, or at least concealed by a strategically placed branch.

“I’ve done this for so long that I’m beginning to get second generation clients. Maybe they always admired their parents’ portrait of their house and would like that for their own, or maybe their parents have passed away and they don’t want to fight with their siblings over who gets an heirloom.

“I’m capturing a very important piece of people’s lives in my paintings, and yet it’s one that’s too often overlooked. A simple painting of your home can bring back a flood of family memories or show off your life’s greatest achievement. Many of my clients commission paintings to give as gifts to their parents. I’ve received emails from them afterward saying that they had never seen their father cry until he saw the house he built with his own two hands immortalized as a work of art.

“You can’t buy that at Walmart.”

Mary works exclusively from the photographs provided by her clients. Residents of Eden Prairie are especially fortunate, however, because Mary is happy to duck out to a house in her hometown to photograph it herself for reference. She can do this discreetly if you would like to surprise someone on your Christmas shopping list. Spies have nothing on Mary’s candid photography skills. And realtors take note: A painting beats the socks off a bottle of wine or a doormat.

To learn more about Watercolors by Mary and place an order, please visit watercolorsbymary.com.

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