Mary Lou Williams was born in Winslow, Arizona in 1942 when buckboards and covered wagons were still being driven into town with horse teams by the Navajo who parked down the street from her house at Hubbell’s feed lot and trading post. The Santa Fe passenger trains were the way to get to Los Angeles and Highway 66 was in full swing. She has been loving the high red desert, the green junipers with pinon nuts, the vast blue skys with white buffalo clouds for years. Her 16 foot acrylic mural of “Navahos at the Grand Canyon” is hanging in a fine Indian arts store in Flagstaff on the corner of Main and San Francisco streets if you happen to be traveling that way.

Moving to Tucson in 1960 to attend the University of Arizona, she graduated in Fine Arts with a degree in painting, with further graduate work at the San Francisco Art Institute, then returning to Tucson because of her love of the Hispanic culture and history of the area and its proximity to the Mexican border. Now 65 she has taught art at Pima College, ran a graphic design business, a decorative tile business and is now “retired” doing what she likes most; painting and doing linoleum cut prints, which suits the love of her heart, or “Corazon”. She hopes you enjoy these rich and endearing statements about the landscape and peoples of the south west and Mexico.