Mary Mulderry MacIsaac is a Quebec-based artist originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Mary has been developing a practice in illustration, graphic art and collage since graduating from Concordia’s Film Studies Program in 2013.

With a compulsive eye for capturing visual language, and as a life long drawer –  Mary is simply learning to look. Over time, drawing has evolved into a way to concretize ideas, and photo-taking has become a new drawing, a new looking, a new way of seeing. 

Deconstructing and reframing images is not always intended to produce works of art, but rather an exercise in self-discipline. As a conduit and a messenger, Mary just wants to share what she’s seeing – but she doesn’t necessarily want you to know what you’re looking at.

I create collages out of my home studio in Montreal. Often, my analog collages are no bigger than my 9”x12” scanner. My scanner itself has been a tool at the center of my art practice for many years. With it, I easily digitize my work for printing or online publishing, but scanning also satisfies my curiosity for documentation, processing and archiving. In the last few years, I have taken collage-on-the-go, whether it be road trips to Upstate New York to visit my extended family, month-long stints in my home province of Nova Scotia, or exploring artist communities in Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec. This transient lifestyle of moving from place to place raises its own set of challenges that the confines of a small city studio do not. However, I can’t deny that traveling affords me an opportunity to feed off the cultural and natural landscapes of places I’ve visited, particularly small communities with rich histories. When I do get up and go, I take with me my scissors, a glue stick, and a book stuffed with scraps of paper, ephemera and a scrap of cardboard.