Mary Lou Higgins: Sibylline Faces

June - November 2025 | Schaefer Gallery

This exhibiton presents a selection of ceramic works and drawings by MaryLou Higgins (1926–2012), an artist active in North Carolina throughout her prolific career. Best known for her illustrative approach to ceramics, Higgins worked across multiple media, creating a body of work defined by intricate draftsmanship and a focus on the female figure.

MaryLou Higgins, Remembering, 1993, Gesso on canvas, BRAHM Permanent Collection 2024.007.015, Photographed by Joshua White

A voracious illustrator, Higgins filled the surfaces of her vessels and forms with an evolving repertory of female faces and figures, rendered with baroque embellishment and a distinct physicality. Often gilded and highly ornamented, these works foreground the female visage, as do the elongated or voluptuous silhouettes of the forms themselves. Her drawing practice extended beyond ceramics into works on paper, canvas, and handmade furniture, where her dense, gestural approach to line and composition further reveals her interest in stylized figuration.

Higgins often collaborated with her husband, Edward Higgins, who at times constructed the ceramic forms she adorned. The figures that populate her work have been compared to the Sibyls—prophetesses of ancient Greece who were believed to articulate divine revelations in rhythmic verse while in a trance. The exaggerated features and expressive gestures of her figures also recall the stylized bodies of late 16th-century Italian, or Mannerist, painting, suggesting an engagement with historical representations of the feminine form.

This exhibition highlights a recent gift to BRAHM, forming the foundation of a growing collection of Higgins’ work. The included pieces demonstrate her sustained engagement with surface, figuration, and narrative, offering insight into an artist whose practice was shaped by both technical experimentation and a fascination with mythic and historical imagery.

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