Artist Profile: Mary Booth Cabot

Balancing Art and Life

By Hannah Olson

Mary Booth Cabot was standing in her apartment in Tennessee forty-six years ago when she received her lifes calling to be an artist. She remembers hearing a voice ask her, What are you doing? For Cabot, that was all the prompting she needed to quit her job as a secretary and move home to Atlanta where she established Wren Hill Gallery and her now nationally recognized private garden.

Cabot has harbored an affinity for art and nature since childhood. She enjoyed helping her mother and grandmother care for their gardens and drawing pictures for her mother of the birds that often visited. It was not until college, however, that she began seriously cultivating her skills through formal classes in painting. She took evening and weekend classes in oil painting when she could spare the time. Cabot recalls one German teacher in particular who would call her up if she ever missed a painting class and convince her, no matter how tired, to come to class. Despite this strong encouragement and her own passion for the art, Cabot gave up painting for a while to focus on the demands of work and school.

The night her life changed forever, Cabot took a leap of faith to follow her passions for art and gardening. I didnt know how to be an artist, said Cabot. That was forty-six years ago. Cabot began painting race cars on commission and now works primarily with subjects from her garden birds and flowers. She has worked with a variety of mediums including oil and acrylic paints, clay, inks, pastels, and watercolor. Watercolor is by far the most challenging medium for Cabot, and its also her favorite. Even the smallest choice you make in watercolor can dramatically affect the overall painting. It is a mind game, like chess, Cabot stated. You have to make the moves further out.

Much of Cabots artistic inspiration comes from the luscious private garden she tends in her own backyard. From December blooming Camellia and variegated fatsia, to Hydrangeas that blossom June, Cabot enjoys an abundance of beauty year-round. Her garden received national recognition in 2011 when the American Hydrangea Society included it on their annual June tour. Today, Cabot offers private tours of her garden and encourages patrons to call for an appointment. She also teaches watercolor classes in her home and offers framing services at less than wholesale prices.

Living life as an artist has been anything but easy for Cabot. She has never regretted the choice she made to take up painting and gardening. Life with all its aspects is like a table with four legs, she said. Each of us has a spiritual leg, an emotional leg, a physical leg, and a mental leg. If one of those legs is shorter than the other or gets suddenly broken, we will not be able to live a balanced life. For Cabot, living a balanced life meant taking a risk to follow her passion for art and sharing that passion with the rest of the world.


For more information about Mary Booth Cabot and her art, visit MaryBoothCabot.com, read her blog at DancingInTheGarden.com,
or call 770-329-3380.