Watercolor Portraits Painted on the Streets of Los Angeles
Mary Heussenstamm was born in 1930 in Southern California. After becoming a registered nurse, she retired at age 59 to devote herself fulltime to mastering the art of watercolor portraiture. Entirely self-taught, even her earliest portraits revealed a truly extraordinary gift.  In 1994 she won the Artist of the Year Award from the Pasadena Arts Council, and in that same year the Pasadena Artist Alliance selected her as Artist-In-Residence at Pasadena City College.Her first book, Multiethnic Watercolor Portraits, sold out in less than 3 years