Mary Art Retreats Founder and workshop co-ordinator, Mary Louise Stein, was Born in 1970 in the beautiful historic “Mother City” - Cape Town, South Africa. She majored in sculpture at the University of Cape Town in 1991, a discipline which included painting, drawing and photography. She has also undergone professional instruction in Textile Art and spent a year studying life drawing in Kalk Bay, Cape Town. She has earned a degree in education and has both founded and fostered a private learning institution and has headed the art department at a prestigious private school in Cape Town, South Africa.

Most of her time is presently spent painting in the studio. Her work involves large scale mixed media some of which are inspired by her students, as the work lends itself to a youthful, street art approach incorporating popular culture such as film and the arts to tell a story. Although she is influenced by the media and current events, her works are more about her personal reflections on life.

During the past 20 years Mary-Louise has worked on large scale commissions, family portraits and murals. During the 1980's she held a number of workshops at CAP (Community Arts Project) in Cape Town which produced protest art for rallies and marches against Apartheid in South Africa. She has exhibited work at major galleries in Cape Town, London, New York, and San Francisco. Mary-Louise is inspired by the vibrancy of life, its many layers and complexities which can be seen in her work. When asked, she describes her work as fallings into a Pop Art genre similar to the works of Robert Rauschenburg and, more recently, Mustafa Maluka, who have hugely influenced her approach to handling surfaces and colour. When not painting, she is a mother to three children, a long distance open-water swimmer and a writer. Every aspect of her life inspires her to create and sends her back to the studio. She prefers large scale works, finding them more interactive as they occupy one’s space and demand attention. In her own words, “I hope my audience will enjoy my works and feel the same sense of excitement that I felt creating them.”