Pen, paper and imagination.
These are the simple ingredients Catonsville artist Mary Jo Kehne uses to usher viewers into her complex world.
More than 60 of her drawings fill the Carroll Mansion Art Gallery in the exhibit, M.J. Kehne: Spaceful Landscapes, sponsored by the Women?s Artists Forum.
Random doodling during her early school days prompted Kehne to start drawing serious art with a ball-point pen, she said.
A Maryland Institute College of Art graduate, she tries to capture the essence of a real space in her abstract drawings. Arched entrances on a building on Mount Royal Road inspired more than 24 drawings on display in her latest exhibit.
“Many [drawings] are invented spaces that began with marks that reveal a familiar rock formation or resemble a figure from past images or [my] dreams,” Kehne said.
“I asked Mary Jo Kehne to be one of our exhibitors because I know what a dedicated and prolific creator M.J. is,” exhibit curator Marge Feldman said. “Her highly imaginative artwork is unlike any I?d ever seen, and I have spent 45 years looking at a lot of art.”
Kehne works primarily in ball-point and gel pens, but occasionally she?ll employ oil pastels and sticks, a technique that creates a sense of movement in the drawings, Carroll Museums Inc. Executive Director Paula Hankins said.
The artist is also an art therapist at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup, where she uses art materials and techniques to help incarcerated felons learn about themselves and their offenses.
“Art therapy changed my art a lot,” she said. “Unveiling all this inner imagery with the patients helped me decide what form to take and medium to use, which was a struggle.”
Kehne guides and observes her patients? creative steps to let their artistic process “speak and heal.”
M.J. Kehne: Spaceful Landscapes
» Carroll Mansion Art Gallery
800 East Lombard St., Baltimore
» Through April 15
» Free
» Wednesday through Saturday
» Noon to 4 p.m.
» 410-605-2964
» Carrollmuseums.org
