One look at Mary Yamine‘s studio and painting style tells you everything you need to know about her—her workplace, a controlled chaos, a colorful kaleidoscope of mayhem, but confined to a specific space. But it is her approach to the actual art that clues you into her psyche: unprimed linen.

When asked about her approach, she‘ll simply tell you that it‘s because she paints raw, nothing should come between the canvas and her brush. A direct translation of what is between her being and through her, flows over into her spiraling, perhaps, unpasteurized method that brushes onto the unfiltered, or trance. Nothing except for the purest form of expression will do. No buffer.

She‘ll use a baby‘s cry as example, the most basic, instinct there is—our first utterance when appearing to the world, the mixture of realization, transposed onto a giant backdrop of human response and diversity, transported often with much difficulty, from the ether and down onto said canvas. “It‘s not art“ (it’s full of HeART) Yamine once said, “It‘s you. It‘s me. It‘s one.“

A conversation with the Universe perhaps, no matter who speaks (THROUGH)… or at all. It is the coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup—discarded, ignored, thrown out, and yet they are the ones who brought the desire to be savored. This is Yamine‘s approach. Human. Painter. Mother. Woman. She doesn‘t know the difference.