About Mara Clawson

Mara Clawson was born in 1992 on a U.S. Army base in Seoul, South Korea. Mara has Familial Dysautonomia, a neurogenetic disorder that affects her autonomic and sensory nervous systems. 

Mara is a self-taught artist who currently resides and works in her Bethesda, Maryland studio. Mara’s artwork is driven by her desire to express herself and connect to others. From the age of 12, Mara began painting visual stories using soft pastels while attending special education schools and summer camps in Maryland. As Mara says, ‘art makes me happy to be who I am and gives me lots of courage.’ 

Sensing how colors mix and combine is at the core of Mara’s artwork and process. Apparent in her early work is how she used her fingers to mix and move the soft pastel colors. Now, Mara layers different colors and patterns of oil pastels, which creates her distinct mark making. Closer inspection of her oil pastel or acrylic paintings reveals a patchwork of textural arrangements and intricate abstract compositions. Mara describes her process as follows: ‘You just need to make sense of what the picture tells you what it needs; it’s like a puzzle. It can be tricky.’ Mara says that she knows an artwork is finished “when colors get along.”

Clawson's choice of subjects is often driven by a desire to raise awareness about issues that concern her, such as vulnerable environments, people, and animals. Her artwork provides a refreshing perspective on the world, one infused with her clear insights and hopeful outlook. Some say that her work exudes ‘the spirit of pure joy.’ This is apparent in the documentary film about Mara, Living Art, which screened in several film festivals from 2019-2021 and is available on vimeo. https://vimeo.com/479811957

Mara’s early art awards and exhibitions were associated with specific communities. For example, in 2016 Mara won a Kennedy Center VSA Emerging Young Artists with Disabilities award. Mara appreciates and feels welcomed by those communities; now, she wants her work to reach a broader audience. Since 2020, progress towards this goal includes having her paintings selected in four different national competitions and exhibitions by jurors from major museums (MoMA, National Gallery of Art, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art) - twice a prizewinner.  In 2022, Cheryl Hazan curated a solo exhibition of Mara’s pastel portraits at Silo6776 gallery in New Hope PA. Most recently, the Art Center of the Bluegrass in Kentucky obtained an NEA grant to commission Mara (and four other artists) to create significant works for exhibition, which moved Mara to paint her two largest acrylic paintings to date.