Mary Grace Tate is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in Los Angeles, CA. She recently completed her MFA at Sierra Nevada College and holds a BA in Studio Art from Vassar College. Her work delves into the unintentional residue of our lived experience. The language on plastic bags, neon signs, and scrawls left on bathroom stalls are framed as earnest attempts for connection between the maker and the viewer. Her resulting representational paintings offer a humorous and sincere lens with which to view the world. 

Her current body of work explores the American motel room as a site for investigation and performance by transforming it into a transient work space. Mary Grace is adopting the spirit of the plein air painter, aiming to make a “landscape painting” in the hours between check in and check out. The compositions zero in on the architecture and objects that exemplify the strange simulacrum of the motel room. These paintings show the viewer that a meaningful experience is accessible even in the ubiquitous, roadside motel.