Mary Evs (b. 1998) is a Toronto-based self-taught artist working primarily in oil painting. Her practice explores emotion through self-examination, with a focus on grief, life choices, and feelings that are physically present yet difficult to put into words.

Drawn to the human face, particularly the eyes, Mary uses figurative painting to give form to these experiences. Her work begins with what she feels: a pressure in the chest, an unresolved thought, a memory, or a question she cannot yet answer. Through colour, expression, and textured surfaces, she explores how these inner experiences might become visible.

Although rooted in personal experience, her paintings leave room for the viewer’s own interpretation. The figures hold feelings that can overlap or contradict one another—longing, doubt, tenderness, anger—without resolving them into a single story. Painting becomes a way of staying with these emotions and understanding herself through them.