About the Artist

Art Legacy Compass - Guidance for Managing, Downsizing or Transitioning an Artist's Studio and Estate addresses a growing and often overlooked issue: how to manage, reduce, and pass on an artist’s work, studio contents, and art-business assets. It provides clear, step-by-step guidance on inventory, provenance, storage, valuation, legal integration, and disposition (donation, sale, auction, transfer, destroyed.)

National data indicate that 45–50% of U.S. visual artists are age 40 or older—millions in mid- to late-career stages. These figures do not account for crafters, photographers, and community-based practitioners working through ateliers, park districts, and local art centers, representing decades of accumulated artwork, materials, and equipment to be disbursed.

Availability

Art Legacy Compass is available through Ingram Content Group (https://www.ingramcontent.com/) at standard retailer terms, or  Barnes and Noble, Amazon​.

The Nutshell Version about Mary Longe - Author and Artist

Mary Longe holds a certificate in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. She lectures on The Art Legacy Compass, and Navigating the Art Marketplace for Emerging Artists and Collectors. Longe is the former executive director of Plein Air Painters Chicago. She is also an artist, who creates multimedia artworks with an eye on the current socio-political experience. Longe’s collage art has been critiqued in Made in Bed Magazine, and her plein air art in New City online magazine. Besides her art and writing life, Mary Longe’s professional career included twenty years working for the American Hospital Association, and seventeen years, as founder and CEO of Longe Life Libraries, which designed specialty consumer health libraries for health care organizations and other businesses. She can be reached at [email protected].

About her Artwork

With years of painting urban and bucolic plein air landscapes, Mary Longe delved deeper into techniques to communicate, experimenting with collage, diorama, and figurines. During the Pandemic, she began a daily practice of making 4x6" collages from paper she'd painted randomly while cleaning acrylic brushes, or sections from her watercolor paintings, developing more than one hundred pieces. Leading up to the 2024 election, she individually hand-painted 2100  figures, 1400 of them with a political message. Those were distributed and left in public places throughout 38 states. 600 are currently available on Etsy under Tottiks of Resistance. Longe holds a certificate in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, frequently lectures on navigating the art marketplace for artists and collectors, for recent audiences that have included: members of the Air Gallery and Studio, Glencoe, IL; The Art Center of Highland Park, IL; Palette and Chisel, Academy of Art, Chicago;  Chicago Alliance of Visual Artists, Chicago; and, Elk Grove Art League, IL. Periodically, Longe creates content on the life of the artist for Streamline Publishing/Fine Art Connoisseur, Plein Air Magazine and its online assets, and others. 

Exhibitions and Events: Urban Bloom, 27 painted paper collages and 3 mixed media dioramas, Palette & Chisel, Chicago, IL, 2025; Tottiks Waiting, 7 plinths, each with 11 hand-painted figures, as part of a Women's Caucus for Art Show, Air Gallery, Glencoe, IL 2024; Solo show -The Buzz – Bees and Beekeepers, An Exhibit of 42 Paintings bringing visibility to the importance of bees, Chimera Loft, Evanston, IL, 2019; Four plein air paintings juried into Real Chicago, Uncommon Ground, Chicago, IL, October, 2021 – January 2022.  One painting juried into 2021 www.OpenHouseChicago.org, October. Two paintings juried into Culture and Agriculture, New Visions Gallery, Marshfield, WI, 2020; Plein Air Painters of Chicago Annual Exhibit, Palette and Chisel, 2019-2016; Two paintings displayed in Public Arts Program, Deerfield, IL, 2017-2018; Shades of Plein Air, New Studio, Evanston, IL, 2018;  Hues of Plein Air, Palette & Chisel, Chicago, IL, 2018; 2017; Painting juried into Community; Wilmette Public Library, Wilmette, IL, 2017; Participated in the following- Northbrook Plein Air Festival, Northbrook, IL, 2018 and 2017, Cedarburg Plein Air Event, 2017, Cedarburg, WI, 2016, Brush with Nature, Emily Oaks Nature Center, Skokie, IL, 2016.

Education: Studied with watercolor artists Thomas Schaller; Timothy J. Clark, Robert Krajecki, Dale Popovich, and, oil painters Steve Puttrich, Errol Jacobson, Colley Whisson, Scott Gellatly, Ken Minami, Mary Gingrich, and Stuart Fullerton. Schools have included: Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art, Chicago, IL; Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL; Highland Park Art Center, The Clearing, Sister Bay, WI; Madeline Island School of Art, WI.