Mary Moye-Rowley
pen, pencil, paint, pastel & Photoshop
Biographical Info
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marymoyerowley.com
Mary Moye-Rowley is both a graphic designer and artist, allowing one to inform the other. She is known for her joyful black-and-white portraiture, and hyper-realism in her still life and landscape. Her compositions featuring everyday objects — from marbles to tools to fabric — invoke symbols of childhood and the richness of everyday life, and speak to the way we imbue objects with meaning.
Growing up in Chicago, Mary was in kindergarten when the Sharpie was invented. She says its dry, smooth line made a vivid mark on her memory and launched a love of artists’ tools from pen and pencil to paint, pastel and Photoshop. Mary’s Artifactory presentation groups her art by the art supply that defines it.
Mary has a BFA in Graphic Design. She worked as a publication designer for the American Dental Association in Chicago and then as a freelance designer in Chicago and Los Angeles. She moved to Iowa City with her family in 1990. Her clients include CBRE, World Book, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill and ACT as well as extensive work with the University of Iowa.
Mary has supported a number of philanthropic projects with her artwork. She designed and illustrated a cookbook for the Iowa City Ronald McDonald House featuring her portraits of 33 children. Mary illustrated the book Before You Were Born, Our Wish for a Baby, creating characters to help explain IVF to children. Working with her young neighbor, Mary wrote and illustrated Logan’s Story, a hospice resource book used to help children understand cancer.
