By Emily Miller

REXBURG — Artist Mary Lou Romney, born in St. Anthony in 1929, was just starting to gain recognition as an emerging artist when she passed away unexpectedly in 2003 while visiting family in Alabama. Her work will be exhibited through the month of November at Rexburg City Hall. The public will have the special opportunity to meet her family members and see the exhibit at Friday’s Art Stroll from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Her son and daughter-in-law, Ben and Kaye Romney, say Mary Lou’s art studio was left mostly untouched for years, but after her husband’s death in 2017 they decided it was time to share Mary Lou’s art with the world again.

“She was really onto something where she was blending eastern art and western art ideas,” Ben says of his mother’s work. He says her art had “flavors of Asian influence” combined with western traditions and landscapes, and she based her master thesis on those concepts. At the time of her death, Mary Lou was president of the Utah Watercolor Society and had been listed in American Artist Magazine as one of the country’s emerging artists.

A mother of seven children, Mary Lou put her education on hold to raise a family, but she used her creative skills in a variety of ways, Ben says. Her biography states she wrote plays and designed sets, sewed stuffed animals and costumes and took a correspondence course in illustration.

“One thing that is really important to remember about her is that she was a mother of seven children and that was her priority,” Kaye says. “So she put off her education until she was older, but she was always so generous. She was always serving other people.”

Ben has fond memories of time spent with his mother while they were both sick from rheumatic fever when he was in the third grade.

“We spent months together, all day because I couldn’t go to school and she couldn’t do anything,” he says. “We’d sit next to each other, propped up in the bed and she would draw.”

When her children were grown, she returned to school, enrolling at the University of Utah in the late 1970s. She studied under notable artists, such as Alvin Gittins and Harrison Groutage, among others.

“She went back to school after her kids left home and really developed her own style,” Ben says.

After completing her education, Mary Lou inspired other artists by teaching workshops throughout Utah and as a guest teacher in higher education settings.

“Mary Lou came to a Ricks College seminar to show her paper folding techniques,” Kaye says. “She would take rice paper from China, fold it up, dip it into different inks and paints and let it unravel. They’re just fascinating.”

She also occasionally helped as a guest teacher in Ben’s floral design classes at Ricks College. He says he and his mother shared a love for the beauty of nature, florals and botanicals.

Mary Lou also had a love for frogs and would frequently incorporate them into her paintings.

“She was kind of a character,” Kaye says. “She loved frogs — little frogs. That was kind of her theme. She actually developed quite a skill in botany textbooks. She was really technical, but she was very fanciful.”

Ben says his mother was an early adopter of watercolor pencils and became an expert in their use and a member of the Watercolor Pencil Society. She used this skill as part of her curriculum as an adjunct art faculty member at the University of Utah for about 15 years, he says.

Of note is the fact that Mary Lou had rheumatoid arthritis, a disease which causes pain and swelling in the joints and can be crippling and debilitating. She was able to find accommodations that helped her continue creating the art that she loved, such as gloves that kept her thumbs where they needed to be.

“I just wish that we had a picture of her with her paintbrush and her hands. Her hands were so swollen,” Kaye says, noting that one of Mary Lou’s self portraits does incorporate her swollen hands.

His mother’s death was a “sudden departure,” Ben says. She left behind a full studio of works in various stages of completion. Ben has been working for years now to digitize all of his mother’s work, which can be viewed at marylouromneyart.com.

“We went in (to her studio) and started to go through everything and we found so many treasures,” Ben says. “We found all her teaching materials too … We’re just thrilled to share it with people.”

As Mary Lou’s passing came at what could have been the height of her art career, Ben and Kaye are determined to get her name and her work back out into the world.

“It was a life well-lived in many ways in what she was able to do with the limitations she had and the drive she had,” Ben says. “It was fun to grow up under her tutelage.”

The Romneys are eager and excited to meet with members of the public at the debut of the gallery Friday at Rexburg City Hall, 35 North 1st East. They will have prints of Mary Lou’s work available to purchase.

The Art Stroll will be held from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. For more information on Art Stroll and other programs offered by the Rexburg Cultural Arts Department, visit rexburgarts.org.