Growing up in
Wyoming with nary a playmate less than ten miles
away, I learned to explore the wide open spaces
of the land, the sky and my own imagination.
Drawing, making things and make believe were
play, expression and comfort. Becoming an artist
was simply an extension of that.
Large figurative works on
paper allow me to indulge my passion for making
marks and telling tall tales. With found objects
and eggs, I play with incongruous juxtapositions
to transform the ordinary into multiple
metaphors. In miniature paintings on wood, I
seek to find a measure of comfort and control as
I redefine mythic images of caution, and from my
porch I celebrate the Mendocino Landscape in
watercolor and pastel.
Although my work has been
included in exhibitions with such Freudian
titles as "Dream Riddle: Images from the
Unconscious" and "Search for Self", my images
are just as often based on real people, places,
personal or public events.
Though born in Morristown,
New Jersey, Mary Case Dekker grew up on a ranch
in Wyoming. After attending the University of
Colorado, she studied fashion illustration at
the Academy of Art in San Francisco and at
Parsons School of Design in New York. When her
education and career path were interrupted by
marriage to artist Fred Dekker, the move back to
California, and motherhood, she turned to Fine
Art and began exhibiting her work throughout the
Bay Area. She has won awards for both painting
and sculpture. She served as Curator of Falkirk
Cultural Center in San Rafael from 1974 to 1982
when she resigned to return to her own art and
education.
In 1986, she was an Artist in
Residence at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming
and in 1989 received a BFA from the San
Francisco Art Institute. Since then her work has
been featured in numerous solo, invitational and
juried exhibitions from Rogue Community College
in Grants Pass, OR to the Maturango Museum in
Ridgecrest, CA and from Rochester, NY to
Mendocino, CA. On the way to deliver the award
winning piece, "On the Way to Eugeria", to the
Mendocino Art Center's Figure Drawing
Competition in 1990, she and her husband fell in
love with the eastern Mendocino landscape,
bought a bit of it, built a barn/studio, then a
house and moved to the county in
1996.
e-mail:mcasedekker@ap.net
Mary Case
Dekker
P.O.
Box 306
Hopland, CA 95449
707-894-9502
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