Mary Kirkwood
{{Infobox artist
| name = Mary Burnett Kirkwood
| image =Mary Kirkwood.jpg
| caption = Self-portrait of Mary Kirkwood
| birth_name = Mary Burnett
| birth_date = December 21, 1904
| birth_place = Hillsboro, Oregon, United States
| death_date ={{Death date and age|1995|6|17|1904|12|21|mf=yes}}
| death_place =
| nationality = American
| field = Painting
| training =
| movement = Modern
| works =
| influenced_by =
| influenced =
}}
Mary Kirkwood (December 21, 1904 – June 17, 1995) was an American artist and a professor at the University of Idaho from 1930 to 1970.{{cite news|title=Mary Burnett Kirkwood, 90, well-known painter|url=http://lmtribune.com/obituaries/mary-burnett-kirkwood-well-known-painter/article_1b0a7fef-abe9-558f-bf1d-acfed605072b.html|accessdate=13 March 2018|newspaper=Lewiston Morning Tribune|date=June 27, 1995}} Kirkwood earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana, and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and completed graduate work at the Royal Art School in Stockholm, Sweden and the College of Art Study Abroad in Paris.{{cite news|title=Moscow Artist's Legacy Lives in Work, Students|newspaper=Moscow-Pullman Daily News|date=June 29, 1995}} The same year, she began teaching at the University of Idaho as a professor of painting and history of painting, and remained with the university for 40 years, until retiring in 1970.
Kirkwood is credited with introducing University of Idaho students to modernist techniques and concepts.{{cite book|last1=Newby|first1=Rick|title=The Rocky Mountain Region: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures|date=2004|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=978-0313328176}} Her work is held in the collection of the University of Idaho and Portland Art Museum.
Background
Mary Kirkwood was born in Hillsboro, Oregon, on December 21, 1904, at the home of her grandparents. Her family lived in Syracuse, New York, Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona before settling in Missoula, Montana, when she was four years old. Kirkwood remained in Missoula and graduated from the University of Montana in 1926. Four years later, in 1930, she earned her master of fine arts degree from the University of Oregon, where she was a member of Pi Lambda Delta.{{cite journal|title=1928 Oregana|url=https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/12021|journal=University of Oregon Special Collections & University Archives, Ld4368 .O7 1928|date=June 1928 |publisher=University of Oregon|accessdate=20 April 2016 |last1=Benton |first1=Mary Clay }}
Influence
A number of her commissioned portraits hang at the University of Idaho. A 1980 painting titled Kate is in the collections at the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon.{{cite web|title=Kate|url=http://www.portlandartmuseum.us/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=36781;type=101|website=www.portlandartmuseum.us|accessdate=10 March 2018}}
There is a scholarship in her name at the University of Idaho.{{cite web|title=Financial Aid & Scholarships|url=http://www.uidaho.edu/financialaid/scholarships/more-scholarship-opportunities/college|website=College & Department University of Idaho Scholarships & Financial Aid|accessdate=20 April 2016}} The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon retains a 1930 painting in its archives of Adam and Eve, produced as part of Kirkwood's MFA degree.
Work
=Agricultural Science Building Mural=
"...nothing could deter Assistant Professor Mary Kirkwood of Art as she sat on a scaffold day after day, painting a mural in the building's lobby. The mural depicted the State's varied types of agriculture, from wheat farming on the rolling Palouse Hills to row-cropping on the level, irrigated Snake River Plain."{{cite book|last1=Gibbs|first1=Rafe|title=Beacon for Mountain and Plain|date=1962|publisher=Caxton Printers|location=Caldwell, ID|page=324}}{{cite book|last1=Trenton|first1=Patricia|title=Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945|date=1995|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0520202030}}
References
{{Reflist}}
{{Idaho's Women of Influence}}
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Category:20th-century American women painters
Category:20th-century American painters
Category:People from Hillsboro, Oregon
Category:University of Oregon alumni
Category:University of Montana alumni