Mary Potter

1900 -1981

As a painter of landscapes, seascapes, still-life, interiors and portraits in oils and watercolours. She studied at Beckenham School of Art in 1916, at the Slade School under Tonks and Steer 1918-20, and she travelled widely.

After her marriage to Stephen Potter in 1927, she lived in Chiswick and later in Aldeburgh, forming a close friendship with Benjamin Britten. She exhibited with the 7 & 5 Society in 1922 and 1923, at the NEAC from 1920 and with the LG from 1927, and held her first solo exhibition at the Bloomsbury Gallery in 1931.

She subsequently showed in London galleries including Tooth’s, the Leicester Galleries and the New Art Centre. Her work was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1980, at the Serpentine Gallery in 1981, and also in the provinces. A prize winner at the John Moores Exhibition in 1981, her work is represented in public collections including the Tate Gallery.

Influenced by Klee and by Oriental painting, her work combined commitment to subject, light and atmosphere with growing abstraction. She used light, pale-toned colour and thin paint to depict ethereal, light suffused forms.

Mary Potter was the painter poet of the Suffolk coast.''What is not there" the artist once said "matters most."

The recent celebratory  and revelatory review and exhibition of her life will keep her at the forefront of the Suffolk artists of her time.