Mary C. Wilhelm

Mary Wilhelm (b. 1992 Kansas) is a painter and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores myth, animality, and the imaginative spaces where instinct, narrative, and transformation converge. Drawing from folklore, fable, and psychological archetypes, her paintings construct hybrid worlds populated by creatures, symbols, and shifting bodies that examine humanity’s entanglement with the wild, the uncanny, and the unknown. Through meticulous draftsmanship and layered painterly processes, her work invites viewers into speculative realms where imagination becomes a method of inquiry and meaning is generated through ambiguity and metamorphosis.

​

Mary earned her MFA in Visual Art (Painting/Drawing) from Arizona State University in 2021, where her thesis exhibition Fable was presented at the Harry Wood Gallery. She received her BFA in Painting from Florida State University, graduating summa cum laude with Honors in the Major. Her work has been exhibited widely across the United States in solo and juried group exhibitions at museums, galleries, and alternative spaces, including the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tempe Center for the Arts, LeMieux Gallery, The Hive Gallery (Los Angeles), Memento Mori Gallery (Colorado), and the Phoenix International Airport. In 2025, she received Best in Show for The Abyss at Memento Mori Gallery in Lakewood, Colorado. Mary has also participated in the Atayana Biophilium residency with the Parliament of Owls, further expanding her interest in ecological imagination and speculative narrative.

​

In addition to her studio practice, Mary is an educator dedicated to teaching drawing and painting as forms of critical inquiry. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting at Adams State University in Alamosa, Colorado. Her teaching emphasizes observation, experimentation, and conceptual development, encouraging students to engage deeply with material process, visual storytelling, and imaginative risk-taking.

​

Mary lives and works in Colorado, where she continues to develop a practice grounded in curiosity, mythic thinking, and the transformative potential of image-making