Throughout my career, I have simultaneously developed several on-going series of paintings, loosely divided by subject matter – nature, still life, portraits, flowers, and the Alice Cycle. After becoming very intrigued by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, I thoroughly researched its history to create a portrait of the ‘real’ Alice, the girl who inspired Carroll to create the story.

Her Alice paintings, never quite fully fantasy or a magical realm, illustrate the story in her unique ideally real way. This is especially true when she paints her mentor, Jules Kirschenbaum, as the Caterpillar. In all Kline-Misol’s paintings, reality is characteristically flattened in a shallow picture plane rather than the traditional pictorial illusion of deep space. She pushes her pictures outward creating an envelope that encompasses the viewer, who absorbs her idealized images and carries them back into the world of everyday reality. Mary Kline-Misol’s paintings are acute reminders of the heightened sensations and rewards of keen observation…when time is forgotten in the joy of looking closely. – David Wells, Guest Curator, Dubuque Museum of Art