Mae Lettuce Information

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Mae Lettuce is a self taught artist who lives in North Carolina. Mae never took art classes, except one summer school course where they made earrings out of pennies and the teacher drilled through her finger. Later on while taking a design course she was required to do drawings, perspective drawings, which never went so well. The instructors kept asking her what was wrong, why was she doing 4 and 5 point perspectives. She didn't understand and kept saying this is what she saw. While always interested in drawing and loving COLOR from the time she can remember, she was discouraged by these instructors and really didn't try again for for at least 10 years.

Mae always felt the need and desire to be able to communicate the things she saw in her head, it was as if she started painting in her head. She could see lots of things, but felt that she wouldn't do it the "right way" and so put it off.

After traveling to Australia and being totally overwhelmed by the color and the contrast of earth to sky, the many colors of the water, the intensely colorful flora and fauna - it just had to be done, she had to paint. After returning to the US, she labored over her first painting for days at the kitchen table of her little apartment in L.A. Always worried that she was doing something wrong and knowing that she did not see things the way other people did.

So, slowly she began to do a little more and was quite encouraged by her friends and others who saw these pieces while she was in L.A. Finally, she decided to return to NC where she could hopefully have space and time to do more art. And for the last 10 years she has worked, painting all kinds of things.

Color and the juxtaposition of color is fascinating to Mae and one of the major components of all her pieces. It seems that she is influenced by what she sees, whether at home (all her dogs) or away. She hopes most of all that others can share in the joy that it gives her to do this work. "The freedom of expression is like a strong dose of medicine for whatever ails you" so says Mae. "I hope that everyone has something that feeds their heart and soul like this does mine, not to mention is a great deal of fun. And let's face facts there is never too much fun!"

Please Click Here to see works for sale by Mae Lettuce