Meet Mary
Augusta

Mary Augusta Hill is an Alabama native who now lives and creates in Dallas, Texas. After graduating from Wake Forest University with a degree in art history and minors in entrepreneurship and studio art, she started the venture of M.Augusta Studio from a small stall in the back of a leather store.

Her style manifests organically on the canvas and she’s learned how to cultivate it through varying paint applications, exploratory brush work, and an eye for scale. A recognizable color palette filled with warm tones is the mark of her work as she gravitate towards warmth and light. Patterns and texture appear as a playful nod to an otherwise regular scene, and the use of paint, whether that be large smears, scratches against the canvas, or thin, transparent layers, is to remind the viewer of the hand of the artist. Mary Augusta paints with both acrylic and oil paints, the former for portraits and ornaments and the latter for most everything else. She loves to paint with the buttery texture and versatility of oils.

Things that inspire Mary Augusta’s work : personal travels, cowgirls, American history, national parks, the power of nostalgia, 1960s fashion and advertisements, the open road and roadside attractions, the American West, music by The Eagles (and other dad music), and long summer days. Outside of the studio, Mary Augusta can be found with with her chow chow rescue, Chico, or perfecting a gin and tonic.

From Mary AugustA:

In my desk drawer, I have a note from my college painting professor that says, “Put on your cowgirl boots and get ‘er done!” - and that has been a defining phrase for my painting. Little did she know that I got my first pair of white cowboy boots with fringe when I was just four!

While I’ve cultivated my creative side all along, I dove head-first into painting during college. From color charts and black-and-white studies, I learned how to capture light and create depth, how to develop paintings, and how to regroup and re-strategize when paintings were stuck in the ugly phase. Some of my favorite studio memories from Wake were late nights painting alongside nine other women where we traded writing term-papers for hand-stretching canvases while blasting music into the early morning hours.

These days, I paint out of my sun-filled studio in our second-story apartment in Texas. My subject matter is a revolving door of landscapes, an ongoing alligator skin-inspired series, and American flags. I’m drawn to the idea of American iconography - what is truly “American” and what influences it? From the bright lights of Vegas to plastic flamingos in your neighbor’s yard - I love the playfulness that is easily identifiable with Americana. I like the tension between timelessness, tackiness, beauty, fun, and trends. I also like to explore the identifying factors of different regions around the country. Having lived in the southeast, the midwest, and now (the border of) the southwest, I find regional identifiers and their landscapes fascinating and portray them in my work.