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My Story Early Life
I want to begin my story by saying that I have lived a tumultuous life. I am half Swedish and half Irish. My parents had opposite views on just about everything which made it a hard time discovering my authentic identity. I was born in Alexandria, Virginia where my art career began when I was five years old, in pre-school; fingerprinting was not in the curriculum! We were taught to paint with brushes standing at easels, on large scale sheets of newsprint. (As time progressed, I eventually moved to New York City after working for seven years teaching handicapped kids. I especially wanted to study drawing as I felt this skill would empower me in any subject I chose to focus on.) At this time, my father worked at the Department of State in Washington D.C.. One day he came home with the news that he had been recruited into the Foreign Service, which meant moving the family to a foreign country. He had no choice, as if he didn’t accept the offer he would lose his job! Our family of four minor children was moving to Stockholm, Sweden. Hearing the news, my mother went into hysterics, since Sweden is not a Catholic country; it is considered a missionary country. Luckily she made friends with some French nuns who helped her to make the adjustment.
Moving To Sweden
That Fall, the family steamed out of New York harbor for a seven days journey in the North Atlantic, on the Scandinavian liner Kungsholm in first class, bound for Gothenburg! The Captain’s Dinner was decorated with magnificent swan ice sculptures. So exciting for children to experience this grandeur! We saw whales swimming in the North Atlantic and there was a cold saltwater pool below decks. We traveled by train the entire width of Sweden to get to Stockholm. On arrival we moved into an apartment near Valhalla Vagen, a short distance from the American Embassy. I got my first job at age ten walking two gorgeous Afghan hounds in the massive field across the street called Djurgarden, filled with high golden grasses. One day at the play area behind our building some boys attacked my six year old brother. I tried to stop them but one boy pulled my hair back to put a knife to my throat! Luckily a teenage girl pushed him away. I never told my parents because I thought they would be upset!
After a few months we moved out of town to Djursholm, into a beautiful villa on Slottsvagen, that featured a castle at the end of the street. My father thought the house was too big, but he rented it at government expense so not too costly. It was located five minutes from the Baltic Sea. We all loved the house. It had five bedrooms, a den, a maid’s room and a beautiful terrace in back where rabbits came to snack in the winter snow. The Vice President of British Petroleum lived in a mansion with his family across the street. Their house was more like a country club than a residence! Their family was friendly to our family. The Embassy Community was close knit. I was studying at an English International school but when I was thirteen I had to transfer to the Swedish School, Dursholm Samskolan, as there were no English speaking schools available for my age bracket. One of my friends was Lilianne Wenerstrom, daughter of Stig Wennerstrom, who was later exposed as a Swedish double agent. We learned what he had done when we were back in Virginia!
Our family made road trips through Europe traveling by car to Denmark, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland and Italy. On one trip when I was twelve we drove to Genoa, Italy to take another ocean liner, The USS Constitution, back to the States for Home Leave. We returned to Sweden for three more years until I was fifteen. We had many adventures horseback riding, ice skating and cross-country skiing on the Baltic Sea. Swedes like to spend time alone on their own islands in the Archipeligo. I visited my friend at her parents place once for which I had to get a security clearance as it was located near a military installation! We got up at 4 am and went “skinny dipping” in the freezing Baltic Sea!
Life In Virginia
I never got over leaving Sweden. When we returned to the States my father found an abandoned house in West Glover, Vermont to fix up for a “Stuga,” a summer home like those Swedes have, without electricity, but ours has facilities. Once Dad had the Vermont house, he spent all his free time and energy fixing it up. Now I spend summers in this restored hundred year old farm house in West Glover with my artist studio and an unfinished loft for work. There are thirteen birch trees in the front yard; we have a wetland in the back and a woods on the side of the house. The neighboring farmer raises cattle in the fields near the house, which was once in a secluded area that is slowly growing and developing.
Sadly, our parents never talked to us so we had to manage without parental support. I navigated life on my own. I went to Falls Church High School, where I was accepted, given the honor of being selected as “Best Dressed,” and had my picture printed in the school paper. I wore white lipstick, tons of eye liner and mascara, teased my hair, and sewed my own clothes. The sorority that rejected my sister wanted me to join. When I told my father, he behaved as if my popularity was somehow wrong. I think subconsciously to earn his love, I became some kind of an outsider. My father wanted to live near a free public golf course so we moved again, out of my second High School district. In the third new high school I was not accepted; I think I figured out why I was not accepted; during the Powderpuff football game, I ran a surprising spectacular sixty-eight yard touchdown. After that no one passed me the ball. Even my father said “they are playing it cosy.” I never imagined something like this could gain me such dislike. I had to make other friends from other schools. Not sure how I managed it but my boyfriend was captain of the football team at Mclean High School and president of his fraternity! We met at a dance in a neighborhood center and we are still friends.
College
I enjoyed my liberal arts studies at a Catholic women’s college in Maryland. To experience a social life I transferred my philosophy and theology credits to University of Dayton. During this time, my father was reassigned to a post in the American Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. Eventually I was able to travel to San Francisco, Honolulu, and Tokyo on my way to Seoul for the summer. The family lived in a beautiful glass house in the former Japanese compound, where we had six servants. Providing jobs was encouraged to help the local people. I returned to Dayton to finish college. The fraternity and sorority set there spurned the transfer students. I studied political science, history and secondary education. Post grad there was no chance of getting a job in my field. There was one opening in history at my High School with five hundred applicants. Instead, my mother got me a job teaching the handicapped but I had to earn a Virginia Teaching Certificate for this position. It took six years of night school and weekend courses but I eventually got it.
Art Study in New York
When I found time, I spent my weekends at the National Gallery of Art in D.C.. As soon as I finished the courses, I signed for an art class at Northern Virginia Community College. I found I enjoyed painting murals with the students so this move made sense. I especially wanted to study drawing as I felt this skill would empower me in any subject I chose to focus on. I met my dream guy (I thought) at the art class; even though our relationship didn’t last, as he liked to be alone a lot to paint I believe he was part of my destiny. He was a super well educated privileged bohemian who went to Columbia University, Harvard University, Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and the New York Studio School, an offshoot of Pratt University located in Greenwich Village. I was only a beginning art student but because he encouraged me to attend art school I developed a portfolio and was accepted! I moved to New York to studied drawing, painting and sculpture.
This move profoundly changed my life. It was an intense experience in a very competitive environment. Of course, I had a lot to learn, especially about the verbal language of art. Still I consistently received positive critiques in the bi-annual series until my teacher said a difficult abstract piece was a “work horse!” painting, so I thought it was alright to show it. I wasn’t told this critique would determine my future standing/brand in the Art World for life! I believe someone who receives an award of “Juror’s Choice” from Ann Philbin, then Director of The Drawing Center of New York can in no way be branded as “untalented.” I had to teach myself, until I was able to study painting technique twenty years ago with NY Academy MFA’s who came to my Harlem studio. On the up side, because my work is strong and challenging, it was noticed on Internet. I have been invited to show in several art fairs and group shows in Europe in the past year, in Milan, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona, Montecarlo and the Red Dot Art Fair held in Miami Art Week. In the past year I have shown in six collective shows in a gallery in Madrid. maryhrbacek.com, @maryhrbacek_trees
Life In New York
After art school I taught at the Manhattan Center for Handicapped Children another seven years; I needed a Master’s Degree in Education for the job. It took four years of Graduate School once again attending nights, weekends and holidays. I did artwork when I could find time. Meanwhile I met my husband in a hiking club, The Appalachian Mountain Club. Our first date was a ten-mile hike! Some time after we got married. Due to the politics I took a sabbatical leave and never returned to teaching. I discovered I could handle the solitude of being a full-time painter. My husband is a Czech mathematician who came to the US just after the Russians moved into Prague to smash the freedom movement, The Prague Spring. He had a grant to do post-graduate studies in mathematics at Berkley, CA. Then he got a job teaching at The City College of New York. We live in Manhattan where I maintain a studio in East Harlem. We have travelled to Morocco, and Egypt, London, Paris and Rome, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Barcelona, Spain. We did road trips in England, in Scotland and in Ireland. We visited China, Iceland, and Norway, Austria, Greece and Canada. We did several road trips in France and Italy and one in Crete. We have seen just about every artwork in Italy!
Creon Art Space
In 2009 I became involved in creating and Presenting a program in an art space called Creon, with Norm Hinsey, a savvy businessman/curator who asked me to present the first exhibition in the space. Word got out and more than two hundred people showed up! Norm kept Creon successfully active until 2016 when he closed its doors. Before Creon, when I realized I had a voice, and to meet people in the very intentionally closed Art World, I decided to develop my critical writing skills. Later I was accepted in The International Association of Art Critics. I have the innate ability to write but it took some time to polish my analytical skills. I noted many of the reviews I read in art magazines seemed to have nothing to do with the actual works! They appeared to be made up of fantasies with no special relevance. The editor of an arts magazine told a gallerist if she signed up for a monthly listing, he would assign me to review her show. This was my second official review. The first was a test with a one-day deadline, to write up a solo Kenneth Nolan exhibit at Jason McCoy Gallery. I luckily made the grade so I started writing on a regular basis.
My Art
Since 2000 I have focused on painting and drawing anthropomorphic trees, trees with a human presence, that are not realistic but evocative, featuring the subtle similarities that link tree-forms and people. At first I became attracted by the textural patterns and peeling bark of the sycamore trees, but as I was also drawing from the live model, my vision changed. The figure and tree limbs fused in my psyche transforming them into a hybrid seemingly sentient human-tree structure. Initially I take digital photographs, then I use them as sources to explore the suggestive forms in very black charcoal drawings, keeping the paper very white for contrast. I found these mysterious trees in Central and Riverside Parks in New York City, which is a surprising hub for nature, and in my travels in Italy, China and Russia. For a time I created wire, metal sculptures using pinecones and found objects such as sticks and logs that I painted gold. I wanted to establish the worth of all objects in nature by the use of the recognized gold standard. Recently I have developed a need to share the recognition that trees are the “rockstars” of the forest.” Their natural cyclical patterns seem to mirror the cyclical, repeated rhythms of movements we so avidly crave in music. It is time we become more conscious of our need as individuals for the supportive aspects to be found in the forests. Others share my view; Brita Stina Sjaggo of the Luokta-Mavas reindeer herding district in Northern Sweden says in The New York Times, “We are not visitors in nature, we are part of nature.” “We are part of the forest and the forest is part of us.” This is a sentiment that resonates deeply within me.
I think the consciousness that trees are complex beings connected to us would go far to create empathy, and increase the likelihood for their survival in the human-dominated world. The tendency of people to help and care for those with whom we empathize is well documented. I hope my art makes a contribution in this direction by stressing the organic roots of all living systems and our primal connection to the nature we have left behind in our high-tech world.
Walter Idlewild in his article, “The Tree of Life,” notes, “today, Hrbacek’s identification with the natural world manifests in her best-known trope: haunting renditions of trees with human characteristics.” “The similarities between the human figure and tree forms in my work seem to create multiple meanings,” she says. “They test the boundaries between imagination and belief.” In his review entitled “Metamorphosis” Siba Kumar Das has stated that “Hrbacek has created an art of reconciliation with nature. At a time when nature is seriously endangered, she pushes us to reimagine that reconciliation. Her art is an ecological force.”
What Matters
I have always been attracted to the principles of Abraham Maslow known as “Self Actualization.” In Virginia, I could feel that I had potential that longed to be developed. I am an ambitious risk-taker who sometimes pushes boundaries, partly because I have
no idea what a boundary is. I learned much later in life to determine where lines are drawn! I always do my best in my life and in my art. I have tried to highlight what I think is noteworthy, inspiring and illuminating to others, to share my vision and voice, which I do in my art reviews and in my paintings.
I choose exhibitions of visual art that I think deserve a closer look with in-depth appreciation. I hope and believe that changes are in the wind, that “The Times, They Are A Changin,’ as Bob Dylan would say! I have been spending summers close to nature in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont for many years. I have met wonderful restauranteurs who I’ve connected with. This area attracts risk-taking individuals who are flourishing here. The Chef put an image of my painting, “Apparition” on his computer desktop. He eventually bought a painting for the couples’ apartment. This is the kind of support I have always hoped would materialize in New York. “Busy Bee Diner” in Glover, Vermont is a thriving diner where the owner/chef has great talent as a cook with an engaging personality. She has commissioned one of my paintings for the interior. Her support and the support of those like her makes my vision in art sustainable for continued growth.
Mary Hrbacek Statement 2026
In my hybrid acrylic paintings I employ quirky techniques to make my art believable without becoming academic. I explore the similarities between human features and tree forms, to produce abstracted amalgams that are permeated with feelings of revelation and regeneration. The paintings, anchored in symbols of transformation in Roman poet Ovid’s, The Metamorphoses, spark striking meanings that take transformation from the border of imagination and belief, to the inherent interconnectedness between mankind and all living organisms. The awareness that trees are related to us by anatomical similarities will go far to create empathy, and increase the likelihood for their survival in the human-dominated world. I would like my art to make a small contribution in this direction by stressing the organic roots of all living systems and our primal link to the nature we have left behind in our high-tech world.
