Mary Ann Lederer feels lucky. Never mind that she's been in a wheelchair 24 years, ever since an intruder shot her in the spine. Never mind that she has “absolutely horrid health problems” and almost died twice.

Mary Ann Lederer paints in her North Fairmount apartment. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

        Lucky?

        “Everywhere I go, everything I do, I find something exciting and good,” she says.

        Right now, Ms. Lederer is too busy to go looking for anything.She's in a frenzy preparing for yet another show of her paintings. This one, opening July 8 at Mullane's, coincides with her 60th birthday.

        Sitting in the living room of her tiny North Fairmount apartment, crammed between a piano and a large table holding an honest-to-heaven turntable and large stack of LPs, surrounded by her paintings, she promises to be there: “The thing is, I have to lie down a lot, so I don't go out much anymore. I spent years trying to get people used to the wheelchair and seeing me carried up steps. But now, because of a cyst on my spine, I have to lie down to deal with the pain. So I'll have a couch at Mullane's. You think people will ever get used to seeing someone lying on a couch in a restaurant?”

Lederer is serious about making the world a better place. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

        Ms. Lederer will have 25 or so paintings in the show. All of them about 18 by 25 inches, all in screamingly bright acrylics and in the $300 or so range, all of them shouting a common theme.

        “I paint the world as I want it to be — sustainable,” she says. “I want it kind. I see the world as a vegetable garden with people holding hands around the earth.

        “I'm for kindness. We too often look for bad guys to blame when we should be giving hugs. Police brutality, racism, the death penalty, they all have to go and be replaced with hugs.”

        Ms. Lederer practices what she preaches. She's a vegetarian of long standing and an avid organic gardener who relies on friends to help out. She donates paintings to any group with a cause she likes. She's a member of several human rights organizations, and though she can't man the picket line, she still helps. Recently, she painted 40 picket signs for a protest march.

One of the three pigs she painted for the Big Pig Gig. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        She's also serious about making the world a better place, and for her, that begins with kids: Every Christmas, she collects upwards of 700 books for the neighbor kids in her low-income, predominately African-American apartment complex — “because they should read,” she says. “They need to read; but they don't always have the opportunity. Our complex (Fay Apartments), usually you only hear about it when there's a police run.

        “I hire the kids, too. Small jobs, like taking out the garbage or running to the store or picking up garbage from my garden. Sometimes, just to reach something on a top shelf. And they love it. Don't let anyone tell you kids don't want to work.”

        The kids return the favor: “I did three Big Pig Gig pigs. Can you see them in this tiny apartment and me maneuvering a wheelchair around? But the kids helped. They came in and moved them around when I needed to change their positions.”

        Sometimes the kids return the favor in a bigger way. “The reason I don't go out alone anymore is because I'm too brittle. Not long ago, I was alone getting out of my car and into my chair. I fell and wedged myself between the chair and the car. If the kids hadn't come along and lifted me into my chair, I'd have been there a long time.”

        She says it again: “I was lucky. See what I mean?”

        Somehow you do.

        Statements like that make you want to know more about this spunky, outspoken artist. Like, say, 10 questions:

        100 years from now, people will say my paintings ...

        I hope they say that they led to a better world. I want to provoke a concept — to make people want to live in the world I paint.

        One thing I really hope the paintings convey ...

        That we need to return to nature, that we need a lot more kindness and we need to treat animals better and we need to treat the planet better.

        If time and money were unlimited, I'd ...

        Money? We need to relax and talk to each other first. I don't think I'd do much differently. Even now, I treat each day as if it were the last and treat each person as if they were the most important one I ever met.

        I'll quit painting when ...

        I could anytime, and I'm not sure I'd miss it. I'd like to lie on the ground and stick my nose in the grass. For me, the paintings are more about the message than the actual painting. The message is that earth is a garden full of little animals, us included.

        One thing I've never done that I want to ...

        Jeeze, that's hard. I haven't yet given back to the planet what I need to give before I go. I guess what I'd like to see is an end to the factory farm system and a reverence for all life before I go.

        Every time I start a painting, I think ...

        I try not to think. I try to feel. The paintings come from the heart, so I try more to feel.

        If I could tell the neighbor kids one thing ...

        That I care deeply about their future. That I hope so many good things happen to them. I'd like to say they'll get all the good things coming to them, but it breaks my heart because I know it's not true.

        One thing I've learned in 60 years ...

        To find something interesting wherever I go. Special things aren't just in special places. Special things are everywhere.

        It makes me angry ...

        When I see any kind of abuse of anyone. When any bully, anyone bigger uses it against anyone smaller or less powerful. Whether it's an adult knocking around a child or a large country knocking around a smaller one.

        One more thing I'd like to say ...

        If I haven't said it by now, I can't imagine.

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