MARY REILLY, is a full time professional artist who has been painting in Oils since 1974. Originally from New Jersey, she moved to Virginia in 1986 with her husband and two daughters. In 1991 Mary opened Creative Brush Studio, which is both her art studio and display gallery, and in 1996 Creative Brush moved to its current location in Historic Downtown Manassas.
Mary enjoys painting a wide variety of subjects, but she is best known for her life-like portrayals of people and animals. Portraits by Mary are in many public and private collections including such prestigious locations as the United States Court of Veterans Appeals in Washington D.C., the University of Virginia in Charlottesville VA, and Washington Hospital Center, Washington D.C.
Magazines that have featured Mary are Northern Virginia, The Piedmont Virginian, Prince William Living and the Piedmont Business Journal where she was highlighted as one of the "25 Women to Watch" in the feature article on Women in Business.
The sense of mood and emotion that Mary brings into her art sets her apart from other artists. Her style of soft-focused realism encompasses a range suitable for the realism of her traditional portraiture to the looseness of her more impressionistic paintings.
Capturing the essence of the subject being painted, and transcending the ordinary, a painting by Mary Reilly becomes a work of art to be treasured and passed down from one generation to the next.