The Girl Who Had Everything

Near the entrance to the L.A. Art Show at L.A. Live last week I was shocked to see this painting there. "Mary by the Sea", painted by renowned watercolorist Lee Blair in the early 1930s of his very young and soon to be wife, this woman standing at the edge of cliff must be a metaphor for the leap this nineteen year old artist was about to take. Discovered by Walt Disney, Mary Blair would become the most important woman artist ever to work at the studio, and working in Hollywood. Her stylings and keen color sense would shape the look in the 1940s and '50s of many Disney classics from Peter Pan to Cinderella to Song of the South. In the '50s and '60s she became a much sought after designer of smart advertising campaigns for clients like Lucky Strike Cigarettes and Meadow Gold Flour, and she would be a successful children's author with such books as "I Can Fly", which is still in print. In the '60s she created the look of several Disneyland attractions such as "Its A Small World", especially the incredible artistic collage of the exterior.

Walt Disney adored Mary, and told her she was his favorite artist. But in the artistic eden known as Disney Studios, serpents lay in wait. There are those who pay a price for being great artists, and Mary Blair was one of them. Upon Walt's death the jealousy of others with a fraction of her talent enjoined a cabal determined she would never work for Disney Studios again. And she didn't. Cast out in the urban wilderness in the 1970s where tastes were changing quickly and her stylings were considered dated and out of style, she descended into alcoholism perhaps accelerated by the burden of having to care for a special needs son. Mary Blair vanished from this earth much too early.

Her once dated style returned within a few years with a vengeance among younger artists who studied her work and adored her. The subject of several books on her life and exhibits of her work culminated this last summer with the largest retrospective of her work called "The Colors of Mary Blair" in Japan in which this painting hung front and center.

It's a haunting painting, but oddly a happy haunting. The girl who had everything is still there, waiting for us, her figure on that spectral haunted plane reassuring us she is ready to pick up where she left off. Welcome back, Mary.