Artist Mary Hale

Artist Mary Hale is still working on perfecting her craft as a landscape painter and a porcelain painter.

F I N D I N G B E A U T Y M ary Hale’s charming home is filled with brightly colored oil paintings, hand-painted light fixtures and porcelain vases, platters and butter dishes adorned with exquisite detail. So it’s surprising to hear the artist say she never considered herself a “natural.”

When it comes to art and painting, Hale said, “Some people just have ‘it’. But not too many people, including me, are naturals. We have to study, practice and train our eyes how to see things to turn them into art.”

For Hale, it’s about observing the beauty in the world around her and studying how to translate that into fine art.

Hale remembers when she was 5, growing up in Long Beach, playing with her best friend who was a year older and “the boss.” Her friend would always choose to play with dolls, but when Hale was allowed to choose, it was always some By SAMANTHA BEY

Artist trained to translate surroundings onto canvas and porcelain

Mary Hale started her artistic path as a painter and she still enjoys the medium, capturing the world around her, but her true passion now is painting porcelain.

kind of art activity. “We’d play with clay, or draw, or make paper shapes. I’ve always really loved art,” she said.

Hale attended Cal Poly Pomona and majored in business, but took several art classes during her tenure there as well as some classes on the side at a nearby junior college. After college, she was able to build a career with a creative outlet, working for Costco designing their gift baskets and helping vendors design food packaging. But her dedication to learning about art and honing her craft continued. She took night classes at a nearby junior college in Walnut.

“The painting classes were always full, so I’d take different drawing and illustration classes and learned so much,” she said. “I loved them. They were such a good eye opener.”

In the early 1980s, Hale attended the Los Angeles County Fair and stumbled across a booth with a group of women artists. “It was the ’80s so there was this big Vic

torian-era resurgence at the time,” she said. The women were painting intricate designs and images on various pieces of porcelain, and Hale was taken by it.

“I loved what those ladies were painting, but didn’t think I could do anything like that,” she said. Still, the women encouraged Hale. “They showed me that it was a forgiving practice because if you messed up, you could just wipe the paint off and start over. They said, ‘You can do it!’,” she remembered. Hale began taking private lessons with the group at night. She loved the art of painting on porcelain, but soon realized the women’s teaching style didn’t quite suit her. Much of what they were doing was simply tracing images and teaching students to copy their exact technique, but Hale wanted to work at it in a way that developed her own style.

“I knew I could go beyond that with the right training and practice,” Hale said. She continued to paint on her own, and began attending art seminars at schools all over the country.

In 1983, two years after she’d started porcelain painting, she met artist Alzora Zaremba doing a “paint in” at an art show. Hale was fascinated by her and her work. “She’s at the top of our field and an incredibly gifted artist,” Hale said. Four years later, she attended a lecture by Zaremba in Arizona and, in her quest to learn

Along with flowers, birds and fish are popular subjects for Hale.

and grow as an artist, approached Zaremba and asked her if she’d come to her home and give her private lessons.

Zaremba agreed, the two hit it off, and their friendship thrives today. Even after Hale moved to Coronado (a return home for her husband, Dale, who grew up here and graduated Coronado High School in 1966) in 2008, the two stayed in touch. Each year, Zaremba comes to stay with Hale for three days and they paint together. Hale treasures the time they spend together as well as the beautiful works of art they co-create. Above her kitchen table is a large glass bowl chandelier that Hale found at a thrift store for $20 that she and Zaremba painted with bold florals. Throughout the home are duos of paintings that the two women painted of the same scene, each in their unique style.

Intricate raise work adorns a Limoges egg, a special piece in Hale's collection.

“My time with Alzora is one of my big vacations of the year. I love her company. She’s an absolute master,” Hale said.

While Hale loves oil painting, her real passion lies in porcelain painting. She finds it more challenging, because the colors can morph drastically once the porcelain goes into the kiln for firing. The color red, for example, doesn’t hold up well and will get overtaken by other colors such as yellow, Hale explained. “So it’s a constant learning process,” she said.

In recent years, Hale began doing “raise work” on her porcelain pieces, using a paste to create a stunning intricacy of tiny dots and lattice work around borders and within vignettes. She also gilds these raised details with a paint that is 45 percent real gold. Once this delicate – and expensive – raise

work is done, it can only be fired once or it will chip, so it can be a tricky process. But Hale is up for the challenge.

“It’s very meditative and therapeutic,” Hale said. “You really lose yourself in it. Your worries and cares go away while you use a different side of your brain, and I often don’t even realize how much time has gone by,” she said.

One treasured piece is a Limoges porcelain egg she painted with soft, dainty roses and painstakingly detailed with ornate raise work. It took many hours to complete and remains a special work in her collection. She uses it to store a lock of her late mother’s hair.

Hale has painted a plethora of vibrantly colored works of art both on canvas and porcelain, depicting gorgeously detailed images, including peacocks, crabs, cherubs, koi fish and oranges. But her favorite subjects are roses. They are also the most challenging for her.

“They are the hardest when it comes to capturing their likeness. They look too stiff if they get overworked, but their layers of petals and their softness is just so hard to get exactly right,” she said.

But, while sipping coffee out of one of her hand-painted mugs, she explained that sometimes it comes out just right, pointing to a perfectly pink, plump rose next to the mug handle.

Since Hale retired in 2010, she’s been paying it forward to other artists also intent on honing their craft.

The Hales renovated their home to add an artist studio, where she paints commissioned pieces and teaches classes twice a week. She’s also the commissioner for public art on the Coronado Cultural Arts Commission and represents Coro“You really lose yourself in it. Your worries and cares go away while you use a different side of your brain, and I often don’t even realize how much time has gone by,” Hale said.

nado for art installations on Port of San Diego land. She has served on the commission’s visual arts committee since 2011, managing local gallery exhibits like those at the C3 Gallery at the Coronado Community Center and running the art booth at the Coronado Flower Show.

Hale finds inspiration in the simple beauty around her every day, sitting in her yard or walking around the neighborhood: a neighbor’s impressive rose garden, brightly blooming spring daffodils in her own front yard and especially the pink angel trumpet tree in her backyard, which she says is spectacular when in bloom.

She has spent much of her life training to see the art in these things.

“My creative process,” Hale said, “is really to seek out the beauty in everything and everybody.”