ABOUT
Mary Ann Leff, born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, never doubted her identity as an artist. She began making art as a teenager, attending Saturday and summer classes at Carnegie Mellon University. Continuing at CMU and graduating from its School of Fine Arts, she was strongly influenced by Robert Lepper and his two semester studio class, “Individual and Social Analysis,” that focused on community and personal memory as factors in artistic expression. He encouraged her to develop this through abstraction.
Her desire to understand this more deeply led to a study of psychology and psychotherapy after she moved to California. Working in the Bay Area, she maintained her art practice as she developed a psychotherapy practice. Sitting for hundreds of hours with psychotherapy patients she experienced the connection between emotion and expression and the impact of the unconscious. She saw how a shift in one person alters a relational field or a family system in the same way that an unexpected color or reflective surface transforms the entire composition of a painting. Exploring what is yet unknown and what lies beneath the surface with a patient runs parallel to her painting process. The abstract paintings she produces are emotionally charged and materially expressive. They explore the tension between the wish to stay hidden and the wish to reveal and be seen, between intimacy and distance, serving as a space of connection between viewer and artist, like the connection between patient and therapist.
Leff’s work has been exhibited in one person and group shows, art fairs, and featured in various publications.
“Why do people make art?” an interviewer once asked Joan Mitchell.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I think maybe it’s a kind of sickness.”
I understand what Mitchell meant. In the studio, a restless discontent drives me with a need to explore, to transform, and to dig beneath the surface. My work emerges from a process of constant revision: layering thick acrylic and metallic paint, then scraping, rubbing, painting over, and peeling back. It is a physical and emotional excavation.
Many of my paintings feel like self-portraits—not in form, but in feeling. They are attempts to speak without language, to make visible what resists articulation. Glossy, reflective surfaces become both literal and symbolic mirrors revealing and distorting, connecting and separating the viewer and myself.
I often work with a range of tools and often with both hands in an intuitive dialogue between gesture and reflection. Each mark responds to the last. I follow the conversation until I hear something true, that is a visual note that feels earned. The final work is not an answer, but an invitation: a wordless composition open to projection, emotion, and discovery. It waits, like I do, to be seen.
RESUME
EDUCATION
Carnegie-Mellon University, School of Fine Art, Pittsburgh, PA
ART FAIRS
Red Dot Miami, exhibiting with and represented by Jen Tough Gallery, December 2023
Art San Diego, exhibiting with and represented by Jen Tough Gallery, November 2023
Santa Fe Art Fair, exhibiting with and represented by Jen Tough Gallery, July 2023
Art Expo New York, exhibiting with and represented by Jen Tough Gallery, March 2023
AWARDS
Second Place, "Seen and Imagined," Route One Gallery, 2023
Finalist Award, Circle Quarterly Art Review Magazine, Circle Foundation for the Arts, 2021
Coordinators’ Prize, Juried Annual, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 2010
Jurors’ Prize, Juried Annual Works on Paper, Berkeley Art Center 1994
ONE PERSON SHOWS
“Shiny Bits,” Avenue Gallery, San Francisco, 2016
“Veiled Discretion,” Avenue Gallery, San Francisco, 2015
“Abstract Paintings,” Highland Partners, Oakland 2014
“Mary Ann Leff: Abstract Paintings,” 201 California Street, San Francisco, curated by
William Torophy, 2011
GROUP SHOWS
“Driven To Abstraction,” Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, CA, juried by Carl Heyward, 2025
“Beyond the Frame: A Celebration of Large-Scale Work,” invited show, Gray Loft Gallery, 2025
"Exploring Monochromatic Art," Arts Benicia, 2024
"Home," The Drawing Room, San Francisco, 2024
"Collective Artists Show," Jen Tough Gallery, 2023
“Fresh Art,” Marin Society of Artists, juried virtual show, juried by Donna Seager, 2023
"Abstract Expressions," Red Bluff Art Gallery, 2023
"Seen and Imagined," Gallery Route One, Pt. Reyes Station, CA , 2nd place prize,
juried by Jeremy Morgan, 2023
“Small Works,” Art Works Downtown, San Rafael, CA 2023
“In the Abstract,” San Fernando Valley Arts and Cultural Center, virtual juried show, 2022
“Still Life,” Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, CA, 2022
“The Love Show,” 10th Anniversary Invitational at Gray Loft Gallery, Oakland, 2022
“Small Works,” Art Works Downtown, San Rafael, CA 2021
“Fresh Art,” Marin Society of Artists, juried virtual show, 2021
“Summer Salon” Gray Loft Gallery, invited virtual show, 2020
Cabrillo Gallery, invited virtual show, 2020
“2020: Artists Vision,” Marin Society of Artists, juried virtual 2020
Art in the Time of Corona: A global Art Project, virtual show, 2020
“2020 Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Challenging Times,” Virtual Show
“Exquisite Little Things,” Invitational at Gray Loft Gallery, Oakland, CA 2018
Room Art Gallery, Mill Valley, CA, 2018
“Tangible Abstractions,” Three person invited show, Gray Loft Gallery, Oakland, CA 2017
“Fire and Water: A Juried Show,” juried by Donna Seager, ArtWorks Downtown, San Rafael, CA 2015
“Crossing Over: A Pop-Up Exhibition,” Curated by Courtney Norris, San Francisco, CA 2015
“Falling: A pop-Up Exhibition,” Curated by Courtney Norris, San Francisco, 2015
Members Show at The Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley 2015
“Array,” at The Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley 2013
“Circles: Interior/Exterior,” Invitational show at Leanne B. Roberts Center Gallery, San Francisco 2012
“Seasons of Water: Contemporary Paintings by Sixteen Bay Area Artists,” Juried show at Art at The Cheese Factory, Sausalito, CA 2011
Juried Annual, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, juried by Chester Arnold, Sebastopol, 2010
“3rd Annual California Centered: Printmaking,” juried by Jamie Brzezinski, Merced County Arts Council, Merced, 2009
“Ink and Clay,” Kellog University Art Gallery, Cal State Poly University, Pomona, juried by Carolyn Peter 2009
“The Subject is Color,” The Art Foundry Gallery, Sacramento, 2008
ProArts Juried Annual, juried by Laura Hoptman, senior curator of the New Museum, NY, Oakland, 2008
Two Person Show, at 525 MARKET STREET, San Francisco, 2007
Members’ Show at the Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, 2007
“Impressive Impressions: A Juried Exhibit of Bay Area Printmaking,” Market Street Gallery, San Francisco, 2006
“Adjectives of Art: A Printmaking Show,” at the CFA Gallery, San Anselmo, CA 2006
Spring Show at Mad River Post, San Francisco, 2006
Members’ Show at the Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, 2004
“Works on Paper, A National Juried Show,” juried by Deborah Klochko, Tim Taylor, Valerie Wade, Berkeley Art Center Berkeley, 1994
“Art and Movement,” at the University of California, Berkeley, 1978
Womanspace Gallery, Berkeley, 1976
Kingpitcher Gallery, gallery artist, Pittsburgh, PA, 1973-1980
Dirosha Pira Gallery, gallery artist, Palm Springs, CA, 1976-1978
Sergio O’Cadiz Gallery, Costa Mesa, CA 1972 to 1975
Velar Gallery, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 1971
PUBLICATIONS
"Contemporary Artist Magazine," Spring 2023
"Contemporary Artist Magazine," Autumn 2023
“Artists of the Bay Area,” Jen Tough Gallery, 2022
"Circle Quarterly Art Review Magazine," Circle Foundation for the Arts, 2021
“Art Spy: Mary Ann Leff, Pearls Before Realtors, Paintings in Piedmont,” The Piedmont Patch, 2013
“Multicultural Encounters,” Cover Art, Japanese Edition, University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 2004
MEMBERSHIPS
Global Art Project
Artist Alliance
Jen Tough Gallery 2023 Artist Collective
The Berkeley Art Center
O'Hanlon Center For the Arts