Mary Baxter

BIO

Born in Lubbock, Texas, raised in San Antonio, Mary Baxter has felt the ‘rightness’ of the Chihuahuan Desert, ever since family camping trips there as a little girl.

She graduated in 1987 from the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she studied painting and advanced printmaking. Her degree was self-financed by working in between semesters, across the country on the high-goal polo circuit.

In 1995 she moved to a ranch an hour Southwest of Marfa, to help raise stocker yearlings and train horses, and it was there that she began to see the beauty and make paintings of the rugged desert. After several years she was able to quit the ranch work and the training and trading of horses, and paint full-time.

Moving to Marathon in 2002, Baxter used the old Shoemaker Hardware building as her studio and gallery for ten years before moving back to Marfa. Now she is happily ensconced in the former high school Vocational Ag. building as her current workio. (Which somehow seems sort of appropriate.)

And she continues to use her vintage Silver Streak trailer that allows her to work in more remote locations, where the smaller paintings are done ‘en plein air’ and the ideas and sketches are gathered for the large paintings that will be finished in the studio.