Mary Orwen (1913–2005) was an American artist known for paintings that appeared to be completely abstract but were usually inspired by objects in the natural world.

Her goal, as she put it, was to "find an echo in the visible world of the order which I feel exists beneath the complexity of life.

"[1] She spent much of her career painting and teaching art in and around Washington, D.C., and was a principal co-founder of an artists' cooperative called Jefferson Place Gallery,[2] that one critic called "a gallery for serious creative work of progressive character" and that Orwen said would demonstrate that the city was not just a provincial backwater.

[9] The following two years she received a pair of scholarships from the Guggenheim Foundation to pursue a type of abstract painting that was then called nonobjective art.

[10][note 1] An emerging artist in New York in 1939, Orwen’s interest in the emotion of non-objective painting convinced her to abandon all other art.

[19] She and thirteen other art department associates participated in an exhibition at the city's United Nations Club in September 1948.

In addition to Orwen, the founders were William Calfee, Robert Gates, Helene McKinsey, Ben Summerford, and Alice Denney.

[5] The founders invited other area artists to join the project including Lothar Brabansky, Colin Greenly, Kenneth Noland, George Bayliss, and Shelby Shackleford.

[35] In 1958, the Evening Star's art critic called the gallery a place for "serious creative work of progressive character".

[40] Over the next twenty-five years, she participated in group and solo exhibitions at commercial galleries as well as museums and other non-profit organizations in the Rochester region.

The following year and in 2001 she contributed paintings to group exhibitions in New York commercial galleries (David Findlay, 1999, and Gary Snyder, 2001).

[44] Between 1952 and 1959, Orwen held a teaching position at a private women's college in Washington called Mount Vernon Seminary and during that time she taught at least one summer session in the art department at American University.

[9][45] After moving to West Virginia in the early 1960s, she taught at Bethany College, a co-ed liberal arts school in the town of that name.

[9] My pictures grow out of a desire to find an echo in the visible world of the order which I feel exists beneath the complexity of life.

In 1953, a critic for The Washington Post said her mature style was on a "borderline between semiabstraction and abstraction", adding that, "The paintings at first glance seem nonrepresentational, but closer study reveals the subject matter clearly projected, and the work ends by seeming a most naturalistic expression, within a highly personal, rather amorphous technique.

"[28] On another occasion, this critic wrote, "Mary Orwen in particular has evolved a personal approach, using a misty, amorphous treatment of abstract forms, which resolve themselves into intimate little scenes of domesticity once the title of a picture is known.

"[50] Another critic said her paintings might at first glance appear to be nonobjective, but added, "if the visitor studies them attentively, he will be able to discern the subjects mistily as through a fog.

[31][51] Explaining her technique in 1959, Orwen said she was seeking to convey rhythmic patterns that exist "beneath the complexity of life."

[1] At this time, she also used a quote by Henri Matisse to convey her search for the "essential character" of her subjects so as to give a "lasting interpretation" by means of her paintings.

[55] Alice Ryan was active in the kinds of civic events that got reported in the society pages of local newspapers.