Mary Jolley is an established Welsh abstract painter. Born to an English father and Welsh mother, she spent her youth in a small village on the outskirts of Pontypool before moving to Cardiff as a student in the 1960s. After periods living in France and Finland, she finally returned to settle in South Wales. She now lives on the coast in Penarth and works from a studio in the centre of Cardiff. She takes her inspiration from the post-war Paris painters. In particular, Giacometti and Nicholas de Stael have influenced her painting, and together with Matisse, have remained important reference points for her. Mary works with oils applied with palette knives and says she owes the vibrancy of her work to the many years she spent painting in the South of France. For her, sunshine has remained an important, and enduring, feature of her paintings.