Mary Obering (b. 1937, Shreveport, d. 2022, New York) received a BA in Psychology at Hollins College in 1959. She studied psychology at Radcliffe College (Harvard’s women’s college) and did post-bachelor work in experimental psychology with BF Skinner at Harvard shortly after. She received an MFA in painting from the University of Denver in June 1971, and shortly thereafter she moved to NYC.

In her early works from the 1970s, she explored color and space by creating monochrome fields of color in acrylic on canvas. She then cut the canvases into horizontal and vertical panels that she attached, one on top of the other, onto a large-scale monochrome field. This idea of layering, of creating space with minimal two-dimensional color field relationships, can be thought of in the broader context of painting in New York at the time, but also through the enduring influence of Josef Albers and his investigations of shape and color.

With the rise in New York in the 1970s of multimedia, performance, and the broadening influence of Conceptual art, painting seemed to be under siege. However, a group of New York painters, Obering among them, were radically returning to traditional methods of application. At this critical time in the history of painting, a shift in her technique occurred. Obering moved away from canvas and began to employ the old master process of egg tempera and gold leaf on gessoed panel. Her interest in these materials first developed when she experienced Renaissance paintings as a child on a trip to Italy—a place she would return to often. Additionally, the technical aspect of painting with these materials appealed to Obering’s interest in scientific engagement, and she has subsequently employed these methods to explore scientific concepts such as particle physics and natural phenomena—a nod to her graduate studies at Harvard in the late 1950s.

Obering’s works have been included in exhibitions at 1975 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; Artists Space, New York; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; The Denver Art Museum and Nelson-Atkins Museum among others. Her works are in the permanent collections of major institutions, including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Detroit Institute of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Perez Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum.