Mary Warner was born in Florida where she attended one of the state's first public art-focused high schools studying creative writing, photography and drawing. She merged her love of history with the visual arts and earned a B.A. degree in Art History from the University of Mississippi with Summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa distinctions. After school, she worked briefly in London at the National Trust, the largest conservation organization in the UK and presided over by HRH Charles, Prince of Wales.
After London, she returned to Oxford, Mississippi where her dedication to art preservation led her to oversee the digitization of the Southern Graphics Council's print archive, in addition to her role as marketing director for one of the most beloved independent booksellers in the world.
In 2007, she served as Executive producer of an arts and literature live, radio broadcast, Thacker Mountain Radio, and began work on her Master's degree in Southern Studies. During this time, her writing and illustrations were published in various media outlets including Garden & Gun, Edible, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Paste Magazine. She graduated in 2009 from the Center for the Study of Southern Culture having produced the first-ever film thesis, which resulted in a documentary featured in two film festivals in the Southeast.
That same year she moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she began her brand and design consultancy, working primarily with luxury international clients in Israel, Italy, the UK, France, and Canada. In addition to her consultancy, Mary has been steadfast in her art making, producing photographs and mixed media art, which have been privately collected. She has participated in a group show at Rebekah Jacob Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina, the Newport Art Museum, in Rhode Island, and the Southeast Center for Photography in the creative art hub of Greenville, South Carolina.
Mary's art (both writing and visual) explores identity and the idea of naming things. As an identical twin and as someone who intimately understands the world of branding where people are encouraged to "differentiate themselves", she has merged her experiences to create work that is understated, yet insightful and captivating. Much of her current work can be found online at Coucou Home.
Mary currently lives in Shanghai where she is studying acupuncture, medical qigong, and Chinese plant medicine at Shanghai University of Traditional Medicine.