Mary Thibault Designer of 2015 Water Festival T-Shirt
An en plein air artist at heart, Mary often sits by the front window
of her Thibault Gallery to paint. When you step inside and see Mary’s
paintings, it’s like being handed a big box of crayons. She uses all
the colors in the spectrum in such a cheerful and invigorating manner
that they can’t help but make you smile. And the thing about it is
that Mary’s personality is also composed of all those cheerful colors,
and just like in her paintings, when you talk to her they all come
alive at once. Fellow artist, Marilee Sartori, sums it up, “Mary has
magic in her brushes.”
No wonder she has been chosen by three Commodores to design their
Water Festival t-shirts first in 2009, then in 2013 and now, again in
2015. But Mary has a much longer association with the Water Festival;
she has spent 21 years painting faces there. Each Commodore chooses
the design he wants and chooses the artist to render it. This year,
Bill Damude, and his wife Marcia, wanted the t-shirt design to be
created with the perspective of being on the sandbar. Two Adirondack
chairs sit on the sand facing the water and in the distance the two
downtown bridges can be seen. In between the chairs is a red cooler
with a platter of Frogmore stew on top, and secretly placed in that
stew is the initial “E” for Mary’s husband, Eric. One chair has a
guitar leaning against it for the Commodore’s son who plays the
guitar, and the other chair has a ribbon on a straw hat with the name
of the Commodore’s daughter. Mary added a few other touches she
thought represent the area, such as a watermelon, a Tervis cup with
the Water Festival logo, and a blue crab skittering across the sand.
In the background, the sun is sinking into the horizon over the
Beaufort River with the sky dressed in resplendent sunset colors.
Mary also designed the Water Festival Fishing Tournament t-shirt
for 2015; her only given criteria were the fish in the design. In a
big rising plume of water, the fish are riding high and cresting on
the waves. There was one teensy little problem, however: the fish Mary
were told to use were a flounder, a redfish (on which she made the
spot in the shape of our state), a trout and a black sea bass; she
rendered them beautifully and realistically. But the black sea bass
was supposed to be a black drum and the painting was finished by the
time the mistake was discovered, so she painted a black drum which was
successfully photoshopped in place. If you stop into the gallery you
can see the original painting and if you look really, really closely,
you will also see that Mary has painted the names of all her children
and grand-children in the design, which is a bit reminiscent of Al
Hirschfeld’s drawings with his “Nina,” or the “Lilly” always found in
Lilly Pulitzer designs. However, for Mary this is simply a way of
celebrating her family.
Family is extremely important to Mary; between them, she and Eric
have seven children (Megan, Erin, Megan, Lauren, Caitlin, Alex, and
Carter). Having known each other at Battery Creek High School (he was
the football player, she was the cheerleader), the two of them
reconnected one year at, of all places, the Commodores Ball during
Water Festival. Eric’s daughter, Lauren, wanted a ride home so Eric
went to trade his Harley for a car to drive her home, when he got back
he ran into Mary who also wanted a ride home; Lauren got another ride
and Eric and Mary started on the ride of their lives. Eric laughs when
he thinks back on the days he knew Mary in high school and says, “When
she walked down the hall, I thought to myself – that girl is a fox.”
Mary responds, “Eric always calls me Beautiful; if he calls me Mary, I
know I’m in trouble.”
Mary’s life wasn’t always such smooth sailing. When she was
eight, she found out she had been adopted at birth. One day when she
went home after school and asked her mother why all the children
teased her because she didn’t look like her parents. It wasn’t for
many years, until after Mary had started the search for her birth
mother and was getting close to finding her, that her adoptive mother
told her the circumstances. Mary’s mother had been raped and didn’t
feel that she could keep a baby that was conceived under those
circumstances, but she did elect to continue the pregnancy so she
could give that life a start. Eventually, Mary did locate her birth
mother, Diane, and when Diane and her husband, Henry, came to Beaufort
to meet Mary, Henry was wearing a pink “It’s A Girl!” button and was
handing out pink cigars at the airport, 29 years after her birth.
Mother and daughter stay in close touch, and a bonus for Mary was
finding out that she has some half-brothers to boot.
Part of what has always sustained Mary is her religion and her
relationship with God. “God’s word always comes into our gallery; we
even have a crucifix over the door. I’m big on gratitude, I keep a
gratitude journal and I pray before, during and after, when I paint. I
know God’s hand is in this.” Raised in the Catholic Church, Mary
taught at St. Peter’s for ten years. In the back of each of her
paintings she writes “John 3:16” to symbolically represent, “For God
so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
A self-taught artist, Mary has wanted her own gallery for many
years; prior to opening the Thibault Gallery, she took a spot at
Atelier on Bay but its upstairs location was more conducive to studio
space than gallery space. Before that, she was at Greenfish Gallery
when it was in the George Elliott house, where she would sit out under
the magnolia tree in the yard and paint there. She began painting when
her daughter, Caitlin, was three. Mary’s mother-in-law at the time,
Mary Howe, was an artist and when Mary took a look at Caitlin’s
child’s water color box one day, she wondered if she, too, could paint
like Grandma. She started with murals in the children’s bedrooms,
painted props for the children’s shows at school, and quickly, she
says, “It became my passion.” On January 7, 2014, her dream became a
reality when the Thibault Gallery opened its doors on Bay Street
welcoming the art of twelve other artists to compliment one another.
Strong colors are Mary’s forte, “They’re friendly; it’s about
love, the bright colors express that love and passion. I think that’s
the thing for all artists, we have to paint what we love. Part of my
inspiration is the Lowcountry – it’s embedded in me.” Of course Mary’s
renditions of the Lowcountry are not soft colored marsh paintings –
they are bright and bold. Another something she has a small passion
for is cupcakes. She paints small square cupcake paintings that have
an actual birthday candle imbedded in the frosting. Signed “Bella”
instead of “Mary,” because the Spanish word for grandmother is
Abuella; they are whimsical and the perfect birthday gift.
When asked what she likes to do when she’s not in the studio,
painting, she responds, “Paint. I like to paint. My favorite thing is
painting outside on my easel. I just love painting, that and being
with my grand-babies,” she laughs when she says, “It’s a good thing
Eric cooks!”
story by mary ellen thompson photography by john wolwerth
