Mary Hughes is a Boston-based painter whose work explores the intersection of landscape, memory, mapping, and the passage of time. Drawing inspiration from both the natural world and the urban environment, she creates layered abstract paintings that transform observations of place into intricate networks of line, color, and form.

These paintings explore nature and landscapes through abstract techniques of line, color, and composition. Drawing inspiration from her Back Bay Fens neighborhood—an “urban wild” full of rich textures and surfaces—Hughes creates works that attempt to capture ephemeral moments, imagined places, weather events, and the passage of time.

These paintings imaginatively render the hidden pockets of nature within urban spaces: vernal pools, garden ponds, underwater scenes, and the river itself. Using botanical forms and underwater imagery, Hughes distills the fluctuating character of these places, translating both visual memory and sensory experience onto the canvas.

Spring Thaw I painting evokes a shifting landscape of light, atmosphere, and movement. Soft layers of lavender, blue, and gray create a luminous, mist-like field, while intricate lines trace organic forms across the surface. Flecks and clusters of color punctuate the composition, creating a sense of energy and forms emerging and dissolving within the atmospheric space, recalling the moment when spring begins to hint at its arrival.

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