Exploring the connection between the human body and natural forms. Hrbacek has been exhibiting her artwork for more than 20 years at galleries and museums in New York City and across the United States, Europe and Asia. Her biggest museum shows includes one at The National Academy of Design, and The Muscarelle Museum of the College of William and Mary. From April 8, 2015 to 29, 2015 Creon Gallery presents New York artist Mary Hrbacek’s Life Before Life, a solo exhibition of her recent drawings and acrylic on linen paintings.
With her rigorous observations of unique trees, she captures the complex ecosystems that trees support. Touching on the environmental issues, the artist’s work highlights the urgent need to sustain and maintain nature. Her semi-abstract imagery explores the similarities between human structural traits, and tree forms. They test the margin between imagination and belief.
Hrbacek quote’s “I want my pictures to speak of trees the way “Mona Lisa” speaks through the ages of the feminine mystique; to be eternal like the Pyramids, or perhaps,” as she kiddingly adds, like Andy Warhol’s “Soup Cans” and Marcel Duchamp’s “Urinal.” Whenever I start a new work I experience the same tensions and expectations that explorers from the Age of Discovery must have felt. Each piece that I create is a daunting voyage in search of an unknown world. My hope is that my work will illuminate the mysterious essences of what we call life that reside within all trees.” 