MARY WHYTE is a teacher and author whose figurative watercolor paintings have earned international recognition. A resident of Johns Island, South Carolina, Whyte garners much of her inspiration from the Gullah descendants of coastal Carolina slaves who number among her most prominent subjects. In 2003, Whyte’s paintings of her Gullah friends culminated in a museum exhibition and book called Alfreda’s World.
In 2011, Whyte’s groundbreaking exhibition Working South opened with fifty works at the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina. Four additional museums signed on to exhibit the large-scale, sensitively rendered watercolors depicting blue-collar workers in industries vanishing throughout the south. Whyte’s unrivaled mastery of the watercolor medium, along with this exhibition, was featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Her book, Working South, references each painting and sketch with background stories of the Southern people and places beautifully portrayed within the exhibition.
Down Bohicket Road, released November 2012, is her comprehensive book of paintings completed over a twenty-year period on Johns Island. It is a rich, visual tribute to friendship that crosses cultural and racial borders and reaches straight to the heart.
Whyte was one of ten watercolor artists in the world invited to the China and Foreign Countries International Watercolour Summit at the Nanning Art Gallery in Nanning China, October 2013. Simultaneously, The Butler Institute of American Art showcased twenty of Whyte’s major works in a solo exhibition named after her recently released biography titled, More Than A Likeness, The Enduring Art of Mary Whyte, written by Martha R. Severens and published by University of South Carolina Press. November 2013 she was featured in a solo exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York City. This exhibition was extended due to the overwhelming positive public response. Other exhibitions have included The World Watermedia Exposition, in Thailand, 2014. Whyte is the author of Painting Portraits and Figures in Watercolor, Watercolor for the Serious Beginner, and An Artist’s Way of Seeing. She continues to teach watercolor nationwide and in Europe. She was awarded the Portrait Society of America's Gold Medal in April of 2016.
