AOM November: Mary Martin

Mary Martin took up photography late in life, but made it her career for 26 years. She retired when digital came in, always having used film: large format cameras for weddings, and good old 35mm. She only entered one contest and won first prize which was a Canon EOS 100 camera, state of the art in those days.

On retirement Mary found that digital wasn’t that bad after all, and found that she enjoyed bird photography in particular and macro opened up a whole new world to her. Queensland has been an inspiration photographically, and Kilcoy in particular.

Since coming to Kilcoy, ten years ago, music came back into her life, she had always written songs, but been too shy to sing in public, except on rare occasions. In 1975, she entered one of her own compositions in a contest run by Radio 2KY in Sydney, which was a country music station at that time, winning a Classic Maton guitar, the CW80, which she still plays. ‘Dream Away my Life’ was recorded by Gay Kahler on RCA Victor.

Kilcoy Unplugged encouraged Mary to sing in public, and that was the start, she now sings in local venues. More encouragement still comes from the core band at Play-itt in Woodford, Jallas Café and the Glasshouse Mountain Musos.

Mary had seven of her songs recorded in Nashville by session singers, and entered these in world wide contests. Mary has won 16 awards for her song writing, with these seven songs having achieved runner-up, Semi finalist, and finalist positions in her category, Adult Contemporary, in the U.S. U.K and Australia. Mary has completely lost count of how many songs she has written, as she is still writing now.

Having won a camera and a guitar, that is pleasing enough, and now at 78, it’s still all systems go.

You can view Mary’s work at the Courthouse Gallery in Yowie Park from 9am – 1pm, Thursday to Monday each week (closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Read more about Mary and see more of her work here.