Reclining Nude - Striking Expressionist Oil Painting by Mary Coral

Description

A starkly beautiful, unconventional nude .
Signed by the artist on the back / verso..


20 x 26 ¾ inches … more A starkly beautiful, unconventional nude .
Signed by the artist on the back / verso..


20 x 26 ¾ inches deep
Oil
Framed
1995-96

Mary Coral was truly a Renaissance Woman:
Born Mary Coral Anderson, on February 29, 1932, Mary Coral grew up in Venice, CA where she learned to sail off the Pacific coast as a Mariner Scout. She worked as a telephone operator to support herself through Santa Monica City College after which she joined her older brother, Albert, at UCLA. Intending to major in English, she discovered drawing fruit flies in the entomology lab renewed her interest in art, which her mother had cultivated by taking her to museums and exhibits as a child.
At UCLA Mary met Michael Maher, her future husband. Michael, who had suffered a severe spinal cord injury in a diving accident as a teenager, was studying endocrinology and later received his PhD from UCLA. Mary and Michael were married in 1956.
The young couple moved to New York, where Mary worked in the circulation department at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and studied art at the Art Students Guild while Michael pursued post graduate work in Microbiology. It was in New York, Mary began her art collection with 3 Daumier pieces from Le Charivari, a passion she fed through out her life.
In 1958, Michael accepted a position as professor of Microbiology at the University of Kansas so they moved to Lawrence where Mary gave birth to two sons, Nicholas and Angus. Lawrence was to be her home for most of the next 55 years, with the exception of a sabbatical year in Berkeley, CA and a year Mary spent organizing her father's seed business files following her divorce from Michael in 1974.

Being the granddaughter of a Congregational minister on her father's side and a free spirited grandmother on her mother's side, Mary inherited a strong sense of justice and determination to correct wrongs wherever she could. Mary was a member of the League of Women Voters, a founder of the Lawrence chapter of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, active in the Lawrence chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice, and many other peace and human rights groups. She actively picketed and demonstrated for racial equality and integration locally and against American involvement in foreign wars, particularly Viet Nam. In 1972. One example of many, is captured in a strikingly memorable newspaper photo of an 8 ½ month pregnant Mary and a very thin Michael with an Afro-American friend, all three in their swim suits, standing at the gates with a pool official and policeman, being denied entry to the segregated municipal swimming pool. Mary had alerted the local paper’s photographer before setting out.
Mary was one of the February Sisters, a group of women and children who peacefully occupied offices at K.U, demanding university sponsored day care, birth control services at the student health center, more women faculty, and a women's studies program at K.U.

Mary was one of the creators of Lorien, Lawrence's first alternative elementary school, and served as its first director, while still finding time to cook gourmet meals, raise her two sons and complete her BFA studying under John Talleur in print making from KU.
After her divorce, upon returning from California, she started work on an Masters degree in Art Therapy, commuting twice a week to Emporia.
In 1977, she and Jim Cooley became domestic partners until her death.
While interning for her Masters degree at the Menninger Foundation, Mary discovered she had breast cancer. Following surgery she took a position as an Assistant Arts and Recreation Director at the Lawrence Senior Center. Eventually, she became Program Director and over a fifteen year period built a Model Arts and Recreation Program that was supported and enhanced by liaisons with the City Parks & Recreation Department and the Lawrence Art Center.
In 1994, at the age of 62, Mary once again returned to school where she completed her unfinished Masters degree in Social Work. Mary worked as a volunteer coordinator for a youth advocacy agency, a counselor at at the first local women's domestic abuse shelter, and as a social worker at a community mental health center.
Plagued with declining health and re-occurrences of cancer, Mary retired from her position but never lost her passion for art or social justice. less