Mary Larsen

Mary Larsen was raised in New York City where she developed an early interest in art while attending an art magnet high school. She studied printmaking and film making at Hampshire College and after a successful career as an art director, completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Florida International University.

Larsen is a mixed-media artist whose work explores transformation, memory, and materiality. She reclaims discarded books, her older paintings and obsolete media, layering paint, ink, maps, and found images to create dreamlike compositions that reflect impermanence and emotional resonance. Through a meditative process of erasure and mark-making, her pieces become palimpsests—spaces where histories are rewritten and identity is reimagined. Her practice is a quiet rebellion against disposability and a celebration of the tactile and the layered nature of experience.

Larsen’s work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, San Juan, Miami and Kyoto. Her work is in corporate and individual collections in New York, Miami, and San Juan. Her altered books are in the special collections at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, the University of Miami, Florida International University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She was a recipient of the Ellies award in 2019 and 2025.