With a range of licensed products that stretches from cards and calendars to dinnerware and fabric, a successful retail store in her hometown, an award-winning magazine, more than 150 book titles published and hundreds of millions of greeting cards sold, the most apt description of artist Mary Engelbreit may be a line pulled from one of her well-known greeting card designs – she truly is "The Queen of Everything." Mary's unmistakable illustration style, imbued with spirited wit and nostalgic warmth, has won her fans the world over. PEOPLE magazine dubbed her a Norman Rockwell for our times.
An entire industry has indeed grown up around Mary Engelbreit, but it all began with a young girl who just wanted to draw pictures. Mary moved into her first "studio," a hastily vacated linen closet in the St. Louis home where she grew up, when she was just 11 years old. "We jammed a desk and chair in there, and I'm sure it was 110 degrees," she remembers. "But I would happily sit in that closet for hours at a time and draw pictures."
Mary's passion and dedication to her drawing has never wavered, and although her company now employs a small staff that "reformats" her art to make it appropriate for a myriad of licensed products, Mary herself still imagines every concept in her head and draws every original illustration with her hand.
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