Mary Filer was born in Edmonton, Alberta on New Year’s Eve in 1920 to Anne Charlotte (Grace) McLeod and Earle Leon Filer of New York City. Her brother, Roderick George McLeod Filer was born in 1931. Before Mary’s family moved from Edmonton to Regina, she attend Oliver and Glenora Schools and in Regina she attended Lakeview School for her 7th grade year. She was a gifted student and awarded ribbons at agricultural fairs and art shows, she played piano and sang soprano, designed costumes for school plays as well as acted. Mary attended high school at Central Collegiate where she contributed drawings of students and teachers to the school yearbook, Ye Flame, and to the school’s newspaper, Perroquet, Mary graduated in 1939 and went on to study commercial and fine art locally at Balfour Technical School in Regina under W. Garnet Hazard. In early 1940, Mary returned to Edmonton to help care for her grandparents and joined the Edmonton Art Club and while there mounted a solo exhibition at the University of Saskatchewan. Later that same year she returned to Regina and in September 1941 began studies in nursing at the Regina General Hospital, graduating in May 1944 and receiving her certificate in 1945.
Mary was engaged to David Hugh Plunkett Brown for two years, but broke off her engagement in 1944 and moved to Montreal where she began post graduate studies at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (MNI) with Dr. Wilder Graves Penfield and others working on a treatment for epilepsy. Mary later had her own medical illustrations published and painted the windows of the hospital for the holiday season.
In April 1945, Filer won a museum and book illustration scholarship and exhibited with the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolor and the Canadian Society of Graphic Artists in Toronto. In 1946, she became a member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA) and made trips to St. Anne’s Military Hospital to sketch and to provide art therapy to the patients there.
In 1946 Filer won another scholarship, the Robert Redford Scholarship for Drawing from Life. She began showing more art with the membership of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour in Toronto, the Canadian Society of Graphic Artist, and the Students Art Association of Montreal. Mary also started teaching at St. Helen’s School in Dunham, Quebec. In 1947, at an exhibition for the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolor in Toronto, her work titled Gloxinia sold for $60.00 and in an exhibition by Canadian Women Painters, Mary’s Still Life was said to be controversial “with Picasso’s ‘foreign’ influence.” In the same year, with the help of her mentor, Arthur Lismer, Mary became an assistant instructor for the Art Association of the Montreal School of Art and Design where she taught children and adults. In 1948, the Department of Education hired Mary to instruct a group of over sixty teachers during the summer. That fall, Mary was teacher-in-charge of over forty students, aged 6 to 8, at the Town of Mount Royal Community Recreation Association Children’s Art Centre using techniques influenced by Victor Lowenfeld, with whom she would later study at Pennsylvania State College. Also in 1948, Mary took courses and exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, an exhibition with all medium of her work including monotypes, wood blocks, lithographs and drawings. In 1949 she exhibited in Vancouver. In 1950, Mary was awarded McGill University’s first Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Following that, she travelled to England for an intense six week program at the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at the University of London which included field-trips, lectures, and all manner of discipline including drama, literature, architecture, visual arts, and music.
Returning to Montreal, Mary started teaching at McGill and continued to show her work in exhibitions. In September 1952 she began negotiations with Dr. Penfield to paint a mural on the board room wall at the Montreal Neurological Institute. This tempura and plaster mural, The Advance of Neurology, is an allegorical history of neurology. Over the summer, Mary painted over 40 life size personalities in a style of figurative post-impressionism while travelling back and forth between Pennsylvania State College (where she had undertaken a Master’s program in 1952) and Montreal. The mural was unveiled in September 1954. Meanwhile, as Mary continued to use all medium in her own work, she continued to teach children and create lino-cuts and prints, etchings, pen and ink drawings, monotypes, portraits and landscapes and prepared for her fourth solo exhibition in November 1953. The National Gallery purchased a lino-cut from this time and another of her pieces, Virgin and Child, was printed in Time Magazine.
In 1955 Mary became an Assistant Professor of Art Education at New York University School of Education but after an unsatisfactory personal relationship ended in 1956, Mary moved to Europe with most of her possessions. Around this time, she began to enjoy the company of the much loved ‘Natasha of Toy Time’ or ‘Tasha’, an Apricot French Miniature Poodle of Russian origins. This dog, and those who followed it, and her cats, were often subjects in her paintings. Mary had a deep affection for animals, sketching them many times over before reproducing them for murals relating to animals and their well-being.
Mary’s pen and ink drawings and lino-cuts were popular for Christmas cards. She was hired by banks and large companies to create for them. In 1957, Filer held a solo exhibit at the Red Lion Pub, and in December had a second solo show at Kinnerton Gallery. In 1958, she was commissioned to design a commemorative scarf for Queen Elizabeth’s trip across Canada.
Mary went to France in October and November 1959 to learn a new process called Crystopal, which was still a ‘secret process’ then that used fiber-glass, resins and plastics with colour. The technique was taught by Jean Pierre Fisholle’s company. While in France, Mary drew Notre Dame Cathedral and visited the Palace at Versailles where she used coloured pens to depict what she saw.
In 1959 Mary was awarded other commissions. One, to create a mural for the new Blue Cross Animal Hospital in Grimsby, she created ‘The History of Our Dumb Friends,’ measuring 7’ x 15’. In that same year she was commissioned by St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Southend-on-Sea, Essex for six windows and a painting for their ceiling. The subject was be to the life of St. Luke done in traditional fresco methods. Two of the nave windows, and the ceiling painting, were dedicated to St. Luke’s Church in October 1960.
From April to May 1961, Filer exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. In England she painted many large wet-on-wet watercolours in the parks and gardens of New Forest, Kew, Richmond Park and other locations. In 1961, Filer bought ‘Goldenhurst Manor’ located near Ashford, Kent, England and once owned by Noel Coward. She had a studio there and her brother, ‘Roddy’ and his family lived there too.
In 1962 Mary had an exhibition in London at Heal's Gallery. Her drawings, prints, and watercolors sold well. Towner Art Gallery in Sussex purchased her Oriental Poppy and Gallery Oldham in Manchester purchased a watercolour, Tiger Lily.
Not only was Mary inspired by animals, she was deeply inspired by the marsh near her property. The wetlands near Goldenhurst are the subject of many of her paintings. In August 1964, Mary opened the Romney Marsh Art Society’s 6th annual exhibition. Mary also painted personalities she was acquainted with: early in her studies, Mr. Detwiler, the principal at Wetmore School in Regina; in England, Gromille Robinson, (a journalist) visited Goldenhurst; and in London, Hon. Zamira Menhuin and Bobo were her subjects. By the mid 60’s Mary was becoming heavily involved with her work in glass and church commissions.
In 1966, St. David's Church, South-End-On-Sea, commissioned her for a work depicting St. David with a dove and staff, in the new glass art. In 1967, St. Michael's and All Angels Church in Westcliff-On-Sea commissioned her for the entire interior decoration.
Mary traveled frequently between Montreal and Victoria between 1967 and 1977. She gave talks about her work on the Neurological mural to nurses and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art bought Filer’s Storm, which she painted while in Hythe, Kent, for $200.00. She married architect and urban planner, Harold Spence-Sales, whom she had known for more than 20 years and in 1968 they teamed up to create a calendar of drawings of the buildings located on the McGill campus, a project commissioned by the Graduate’s Student Society at McGill.
In January 1969 Mary set up a space in Harold’s office on Sherbrooke Street, in Montreal to show clients her work. In October 1969, Mary taught for two months at Acadia Handicraft Guild on Prince Edward Island and in the early 1970s, Harold and Mary moved to Victoria, B.C.
In August 1970, a married couple who attended Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria commissioned Mary to commemorate the Lunar Landing of July 20, 1969. Her two windows over the doorway in the South Tower, The Moon Window ($500.00) and The Sun (donated), were soon completed. These windows were the first stained glass windows made without the use of lead but with glue and silicon. The windows were dedicated in April 1971.
While living in Victoria in the early 1970s, Mary continued to exhibit in England and paint in her Victoria studio. She had incorporated gold leaf foil with acrylic paint and worked with coloured glass designing small and large scale sculpture for exhibit for the foyers of large buildings. Cosmos, designed for Roberts House Apartments in Victoria, weighs 300 pounds and is a free standing work in an iron frame 5 feet in diameter. In the fall of 1973, Mary showed her first glass exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria which was based on a sun and lunar light theme. The gallery bought Filer’s Sunburst and she donated Counterthrust. Later, Sun Dazzle III and Clean Cold II were donated to the Gallery for auction.
In winter 1974, Mary and Harold visited England, France and Italy. The next year, Mary had a solo show of various types of glass including laminated glass, float, recycled, stained and plate glass and was also featured on the CBC program Take 30.
St. Phillip’s Anglican Church in Oak Bay, BC was one of Mary’s most extensive commissions. She worked to fill the north and south nave windows and other spaces with work representing a spiritual life; God, balanced with a temporal life; man, and the land. For St. Mark’s Anglican Church at Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, Mary was hired to make a large floral rose window. She meanwhile continued to accept commissions for decorative windows and sculptural pieces from private citizens and building owners and architects. In 1976, Mary and Harold moved to English Bay and then to an eastside warehouse / factory building on Beatty Street in Vancouver. Mary remained focused with speaking engagements, exhibiting and completing her many commissions -- so committed to her work she even sketched during a stay in hospital in 1980.
Mary was commissioned to create thirty-six memorial windows for Christ Church at Milles Isles, Quebec while both she and Harold continued to work on impressive projects as a duo. Mary also participated in several exhibitions featuring her glass work during this time and was selected to contribute her work, along with other well-respected Canadian artists, at Expo ’86. That same year she was made an honorary member of the British Columbia Landscape Architects Society and succeeded with more church commissions.
Mary, as always, continued to cultivate her relationships with societies and local art galleries; as patron, board member or simply interested party. The B.C. Glass Artists Association, Simon Fraser University, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Back Room Gallery in Oak Bay, and many others benefited from her numerous contributions. By 1990, the Mary Filer Fund was established at the Centre for Contemporary Arts and she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Simon Fraser University. In 1992 Mary was recognized as an Honourary Life Member of the BCGAA and recognized by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada for her outstanding achievement in arts with architecture.
Mary created another set of windows in a geometric pattern for St. Mary’s Church in Nanoose Bay in 1999. Years later she was invited back to create another work for them. Mary’s popularity, even in advanced age and sometimes ill health, was unwavering. She was invited back to the Montreal Neurological Hospital in Montreal and commissioned co-create The Neuroessence, for the Helen Penfield Atrium in the new building, which was installed in 2002. After Harold passed away in 2004, Mary continued make art, to exhibit and to contribute. Over the span of her career, she participated in more than 150 exhibitions and contributed to a myriad of institutions, societies and associations. Mary passed away in 2016.
