Mary Jane Neumann
I am a Chicago-based visual artist working in pastel and charcoal. My practice centers on observational drawing as a sustained attention to what is fleeting, overlooked, or on the verge of disappearing.
Trained in biomedical science and East Asian medicine, I bring an attentiveness to the body, to gesture, and to the ways presence registers before language. This informs a practice rooted in atmosphere, anatomy, and quiet looking, on the edge of what can be seen and what can only be felt.
I draw from life, memory, and the spaces between them. My subjects range from urban environments and liminal spaces to portraits of women from my own life, each approached with a refusal to let a moment resolve too quickly.
I see drawing as an act of witnessing. Each piece is a fragment: still, contingent, and not yet finished.