Bio: Mary Ann Leff, born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, never doubted her identity as an artist. She began making art as a teenager, attending Saturday and summer classes at Carnegie Mellon University. Continuing at CMU and graduating from its School of Fine Arts, she was strongly influenced by Robert Lepper and his class “Individual and Social Analysis” that focused on community and personal memory as factors in artistic expression. He encouraged her to develop this through abstraction. 

Her desire to understand this more deeply led to a study of psychology and psychotherapy after she moved to California. Working in the Bay Area, she maintained her art practice as she developed a psychotherapy practice. Sitting for hundreds of hours with psychotherapy patients she experienced the connection between emotion and expression and the impact of the unconscious. She saw how a shift in one person alters a relational field or a family system in the same way that an unexpected color or reflective surface transforms the entire composition of a painting. Exploring what is yet unknown and what lies beneath the surface with a patient runs parallel to her painting process. The abstract paintings she produces are emotionally charged and materially expressive. They explore the tension between the wish to stay hidden and the wish to reveal and be seen, between intimacy and distance, serving as a space of connection between viewer and artist, like the connection between patient and therapist.

Leff’s work has been exhibited in one person and group shows, art fairs, and featured in various publications.