Mary WHYTE, 1953 ✿

Mary Whyte is an American watercolor artist (born 1953 in Cleveland, Ohio), a traditionalist preferring a representational style, and the author of seven published books, who has earned awards for her large-scale watercolors.

In 2016, the Portrait Society of America chose Whyte as the 2016 recipient of the Society’s Gold Medal, their highest honor. In 2013, Whyte was awarded by the state of South Carolina, the South Carolina Governor’s Award for the Arts; the highest honor given to an artist in South Carolina.

Whyte has works in corporate, university, private, and museum collections, and has exhibited nationally including the Greenville County Museum of Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Gibbes Museum of Art,

The Salmagundi Club, National Arts Club, Mennello Museum of American Art, Telfair Museums, Morris Museum of Art, and internationally in the China and Foreign Countries International Watercolour Summit at the Nanning Art Gallery in Nanning China, and Thailand in the World Watermedia Exposition.

Whyte presents her large-scale watercolor portraits in museum exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally including the Working South exhibition of paintings of people working in vanishing industries throughout the southern United States.

"Mary Whyte is the artist of record of a changing world. . . a world she's captured in a style all her own," says CBS News. In Whyte’s Working South exhibition of 50 works that aired on CBS News, Whyte proclaimed about her work: "Getting a likeness is the easy part, making a good painting that endures, that speaks forever is the difficult part."