Auto artist wants to 'go places'

We ran into auto artist Mary Watt Yeadon (www.marywattyeadon.com) at the Buick-Olds-Pontiac-Cadillac Swap Meet in St. Charles, Ill., a few weeks ago. Yeadon started painting pictures of cars instead of wall murals around 2007. She has developed a technique of painting a single car and then giving the background behind the one car a very artistic look.

Yeadon comes from a car-collecting family. She started with a painting of son’s Mustang. Then, he talked her into displaying her paintings at car shows. Before long, Her work has been seen at Mecum Auctions and at Barrett-Jackson. She wants to display at Carlisle Events.

It takes her about a month to do a painting and she charges about $2,000-$2,500 for a 2 x 3-ft. commission. Some of the originals she sells at shows run in the $2,000 to $4,000 range. She also sells posters of some artworks. '60s and '70s cars appear to be her favorites, but she is not locked into any certain type or era of cars.

One of Yeadon’s dreams is to be in the Automotive Fine Arts Society (www.automotivefineartssociety.com). ”You have to be pretty good,” she told us. “There are only 36 members. You have to show at Amelia Island or Pebble Beach and you can only get voted in if someone gives up their membership.”

“I like art and I like to travel,” Yeadon told Old Cars Weekly. “My family is originally from the East Coast, so I want to travel to shows like Carlisle and Hershey and bring Bellflower Art to places it’s never been."