Murphysboro artist Mary Pachikara has loved landscape imagery since she grew up in the lush green tropical environment of southern India. Pachikara has a Bachelors degree in Botany from University of Kerala, India. Several years later, she received her formal art education at the Southern Illinois University School of Art at Carbondale.

For Pachikara, painting is a form of personal expression through the arrangement of lines shapes and colors. Among traditional painting media, she is particularly fond of watercolor. She enjoys the immediacy of the medium, and the contrast between the vibrant colors and the crisp white of the paper. Her compositions are derived from flowers, figures, and the beautiful Southern Illinois landscape where she resides. For Pachikara, the avid gardener and botany graduate, nothing rivals the expressive qualities of nature.

Pachikara is an accomplished watercolor artist who has exhibited her work in galleries in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Massachusetts. Her work is sold through the Componere Gallery in St. Louis, the Museum Store in Chicago and the Southern Illinois Artisans Shop in Rend Lake, Illinois. She is a member of the Illinois Watercolor Society and in 2000, she received their Special Award for the Year. Also in 2000, she received a Merit Award from the New England Watercolor Society as part of the 7th North American Biennial.