“Cloudscape with Mountain” by Mary Ann Bransby

Cloudscape with Mountain by Mary Ann Bransby, Mixed Media

Artist Biography

Mary Ann was described as a precocious child and teenager excelling in most everything she tried including art, crafts, music and sports. As a teen she received a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute, where she studied silversmithing and mastered the art of watercolor painting under the tutoring of Thomas Hart Benton.

Just two weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Mary Ann married Eric Bransby. During the war, while Eric was in the army, Mary Ann designed parts and the die forms for B-52 long range bombers.

When the war ended, Mary Ann and family (including new daughter, Fredericka) moved to Colorado Springs so Mary Ann could study at the Broadmoor Academy at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, under the direction of Boardman Robinson.

In that same year, 1946, the family of three moved to Yale University where Mary Ann began the study of ceramics while Eric taught there.

In 1953 the family returned to the high altitude of Colorado Springs in the hope that Fredericka’s asthma might be relieved. The change worked as Mary Ann and good friend, Ava Heinrichsdorff started a horsemanship program for children, in which Fredericka thrived.

In 1965 Mary Ann, following Eric’s joining the faculty at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, completed her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Fine Arts. She then taught at UMKC at the graduate level. She initiated a program which involved the three university departments of Art, Music and Dance called “Choreographing the Object”. This performance, done a number of times throughout the midwest, was so popular that it was aired on the television program, Good Morning America.

In retirement, Mary Ann and Eric came “home” to Colorado Springs, continuing her love of metalwork and watercolor. While enjoying her own art production, she organized two groups, the Pikes Peak Watercolor Society and the Chromatic Edge.

Following Mary Ann’s death in 2011, Eric Bransby borrowed from author Lillian McCue’s words when her husband passed away: “Of all the manifold gifts that I gave you, the last, and best, is this: to outlive you to take on myself in bereavement to live. Farewell, beloved. Accept what I give.”