MARY BARR RHODES (b.1954 West Virginia, US)
“Bringing a sense of structured serenity and captivating beauty to elevate your residential or corporate space.”
Mary lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rhodes is a mixed media artist working with themes related to nature, color energy, feminist issues and light resonance.
RHODES holds a Masters of Art from Marshall University and was greatly influenced by the Abstract Expressionist Movement. Her artwork has been strongly influenced by the Feminist Movement and is infused with feminine energy.
Dynamic color energy and light resonance radiate from her work. Her artwork reflects her personal interest in energy and light resonance. Her objective is to foster a sense of wonder in the viewer.
Her artwork is in numerous prestigious corporations such as Graydon Law Firm, First Financial Bank, Von Lehman Accounting, KMK Law and Johnson Investment Counsel. Her artwork is also in numerous homes across the United States, Europe and South America.
Recent highlights include an award by Polly Magazine and being named Artist of the Year by Art Design Consultants. She was recently commissioned by a new boutique hotel, The Kinley, and was awarded an upcoming light installation at Par-Projects.
You can visit her in person at the Pendleton Art Center, Studio #712. She is also an Artist in Residence at SoHza Sister Boutique!
Artists Statement - Visions of Light
This collection explores the radiant energy fields that illuminate our inner and outer worlds, inviting viewers to experience color, texture, and light in transformative ways. Rhodes is known for her mixed media approach centered on themes such as nature, color energy, feminine issues, and light resonance. Pulling from her archives indicates that the exhibition will feature a curated selection of her career-spanning pieces, emphasizing the evolution and diversity of her work through the lens of natural and spiritual grace.
Artist‘s Statement - Nature‘s Grace
Step into the warmth of our Fall season surrounded by the natural beauty of original artwork inspired by flora, exclusively on display at Sohza Sister. Each piece celebrates the quiet poetry of petals, leaves, and wild blooms solarized in the Autumn Sun. So, please pause amid the bustle and reconnect with nature’s grace and color at Sohza Sister.
These original, one of a kind select artworks emerge from a luminous collaboration between Lloyd Greene and Mary Barr Rhodes — a creative dialogue formed through friendship and shared reverence for beauty. Greene’s solarized photographs, captured “in the wild,” hold fleeting moments of natural stillness, while Rhodes’ painterly embellishments excite the spirit within each scene.
Together, their work honors the soulful presence found in nature’s quiet wonder — a visual meditation on connection, grace, and artistic harmony. From delicately layered botanicals to bold floral expressions, this collection blossoms with the spirit Autumn’s Harvest of gratitude and light. Whether you’re discovering a piece for your home or selecting a heartfelt gift, these works bring a touch of living beauty to any space.
Artists Statement - Ophelia Alone
Holly Doan Spraul, owner and director of Wash Park Art located in Cincinnati. curated an art exhibition for the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company to run during the showing of A Room in the Castle. The exhibition, entitled Angels and Ministers, is a collaboration in cyanotype, photography and mixed media - a modern interpretation of some of the supernatural and ethereal characters and enigmatic and philosophical themes of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
Now these works and additional works play on the aftermath of tragedy, what remains? Our exhibition, “Ophelia Alone,” reimagines the world of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” if only Ophelia survived. Here, the familiar drama of vengeance and madness unravels into a solitary reckoning—Ophelia, the perennial observer, is no longer drowned by circumstance but endures as the sole keeper of Elsinore’s haunted corridors.
This body of work explores the weight and liberation of being left standing. Through photography, painting and mixed-media works, Ophelia’s voice reverberates in an empty court, her gaze lingering over the remnants of intrigue, ambition, and loss. The absence of Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and Polonius transforms the palace into both tomb and cocoon. Ophelia, stripped of role and reference, confronts her own survival. She is not only a relic, but a witness—of love twisted, innocence tainted, and history rewritten in the hush after catastrophe.
Artists have responded to Ophelia’s solitude as a generative force. Their works surface new identities for her—mourner, queen, mythic…threading herself out of a labyrinth of grief. The exhibition becomes both memorial and genesis, asking: Who is Ophelia when freed from all eyes and edicts? What meaning can be gathered from the ruins she inherits—broken garlands, empty thrones, fragments of theater scattered in the dark?
“Ophelia Alone” invites viewers to encounter silence as narrative and survival as an act of creation.
- Marry Barr Rhodes
MARY BARR RHODES is an internationally acclaimed artist working out of Cincinnati, OH.
Her artwork is in numerous prestigious corporations such as Graydon Law Firm, First Financial Bank, Von Lehman Accounting, KMK Law and Johnson Investment Counsel. Her artwork is also in numerous homes across the United States, Europe and South America. Rhodes serves as an artist, educator, facilitator, consultant and curator.
Recent highlights include an award by Venue Magazine and being named Artist of the Year by Art Design Consultants, as well as, a publisher’s award by Polly Magazine. She was recently commissioned by a new boutique hotel, The Kinley, and was awarded a light installation at Par-Projects. You can find her work each year at the prestigious Context Fair during Art Basel in Miami.
