About
My work is an exploration of color, pattern, and possibility.
Through collage, acrylic painting, and mixed media, I create vibrant, layered compositions that invite connection, spark curiosity, and celebrate joy.
Statement
My work explores color, material, pattern, and the possibilities that emerge through process. I am interested in the moment when intention gives way to discovery—when materials begin to suggest their own direction and unexpected relationships take form.
My connection to material began in childhood. My mother made my clothes, and I spent hours with her in fabric stores choosing colors, patterns, and textures. Watching those materials become something entirely new shaped the way I think about making and established an enduring connection between material, transformation, and care.
Years later, encountering Japanese textiles at the Seattle Art Museum introduced me to Shibori. Traditionally created through binding, folding, stitching, and dyeing cloth, these textiles opened a new way of thinking about pattern and surface. Rather than replicate the traditional process, I began exploring its visual language through paint.
In my Shibori series, fluid acrylic is applied to Dura-Lar, a translucent polyester film that allows pigment to move, pool, separate, and collide. I build layers intuitively, responding to what happens on the surface rather than attempting to control every outcome. The resulting paintings reference textiles and organic pattern while remaining rooted in abstraction.
Collage provides a counterpoint to this fluidity. I cut my painted Dura-Lar into shapes and fragments and reassemble them into new compositions. What begins spontaneously becomes deliberate as colors, edges, and seemingly unrelated pieces find unexpected connections.
My works on paper extend this exploration on a more intimate scale. Painted fragments of Dura-Lar are assembled on paper, allowing color, gesture, and negative space to become especially immediate. Their smaller scale encourages experimentation, spontaneity, and a sense of play.
Across these bodies of work, I return continually to the transformative potential of color—its ability to create energy, alter perception, and evoke emotion before we have had time to name it.
Ultimately, my work is about possibility: the possibility inherent in materials, unexpected combinations, and remaining curious. I want the work to offer a moment of visual pleasure and discovery, and perhaps a reminder that there is always another way of seeing.
Bio
Mary Zeran is a third-generation artist whose relationship with making began at an early age. Raised in a family where creativity was woven into everyday life, she developed an enduring fascination with material, color, and the process of transforming one thing into another.
Zeran studied art at the University of Iowa, initially focusing on jewelry before expanding her practice to include sculpture, painting, and ceramics. This multidisciplinary foundation continues to inform her work, particularly her attention to material, surface, composition, and the physical act of making.
Working primarily in abstraction, Zeran creates paintings and collages distinguished by saturated color, layered surfaces, and an intuitive vocabulary of pattern and gesture. Her practice is rooted in experimentation and an ongoing investigation of how color and material can evoke emotion, energy, and a sense of possibility.
Zeran’s work is held in public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Harvard Business School, Boston; and United Fire Group. Her professional experience includes an artist residency at Oregon College of Art and Craft and a 2% for the Arts Purchase Prize from the Visual Arts Commission in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Her work has been featured in Chunghi Choo and Her Students, published by Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany, as well as The New Art Examiner and Artweek.
Zeran lives and works in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.