Self portrait: A Dutch sea captain’s daughter, I prefer drawing a boat on my head instead of a hat.

After 30 years in the branding and design business, running two small agencies in Sydney and Brooklyn, one day I visited San Miguel de Allende and started to paint for the first time in my life.

Even before Mexico, the mark marking was already happening. I was living in Brooklyn, married and working in brand identity. My husband (then husband) was using different widths of black tape on a project, and one day I picked up a few rolls and cut strips. I'd already bought a roll of blank white paper, so I spread it across the dining room table, and the mark making began.

The tape came from Pearl Paint on Canal Street (now closed), and I kept going back for more. When friends came for dinner, it seemed they were more interested in the black designs than the food! One night, after they left, I looked at the table, gasping and said out loud, "that's what I call black line crazy!"

Crazy mark making with black tape on a paper table cloth on a dining room table in Brooklyn. (A few extra flourishes added later!)
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After producing the first collection of bags in Leon (2020), I trademarked BLACK LINE CRAZY in the USA and Mexico. In 2024, I changed the name to VAN DE WIEL (a long story for another time).

Black and White, On Purpose: The moment I decided to paint, I bought a can of black acrylic house paint at the local store. No color to hide behind. No decisions about palette. Just shape, gesture, line and marks. Yes, a little color has crept in since, but black and white is still where every piece begins.

I rented a space from Gerardo Ruiz studio near Fabrica La Aurora. Here’s where, for the first time in my life (2012), I started to paint floor to ceiling. Here’s the first one.
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I don't sketch. I don't plan. I put the brush on the canvas and see what happens.

Thirty years of brand strategy meant everything was planned: research, positioning, a clear path from A to B. I was known for the off-script questions, the ones that made a CEO stop, think and say, "No one has ever asked me that."

On the canvas, I do the reverse. I don't ask the canvas anything. I put the first mark down, trust the process, and the answer shows up in the paint. I wouldn’t call it being fearless. I just don't mind not knowing how it ends. It's an amazingly exuberant feeling.

THE EXCEPTIONALS, B/W painting here on the wall, and in the next image interpreted across a 100% wool hand-woven area rug.

Here’s THE EXCEPTIONALS area rug.
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I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't been in the branding business, I never would have felt compelled to translate my abstract work across such different mediums, platforms and materials.

This painting, SERIOUS PLAY, has been interpreted and printed across a collection of wearable art bags. See the next image.

Here is SERIOUS PLAY printed on zippered crossbody sleeve bag.
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Because I believe art belongs in everyday life. Not just on walls.
And everything I design begins as a black-and-white painting.

Soon after I started painting, my friend, the author and poet Nancy Shapiro, said, "Van, you are painting your way into being."

Drop by the galería and say hello.

Galería Van de Wiel
Calle Julian Carillo 5, Colonia Guadalupe
Wednesday-Saturdays 11am-4pm
van@shopvandewiel.com +1 213-361-7500

shopvandewiel.com
instagram.com/shopvandewiel
instagram.com/maryvandewiel
facebook.com/maryvandewiel

Bags
Art On & Off the Wall

SPOT THE HORIZON - messenger bag

BETWEEN YOU AND ME - laptop bag

NOT ANOTHER BAG!

"I didn't come to Mexico to start a bag business. I landed in the middle Mexico, and life had a funny way of introducing me to the things I didn't know I was looking for.

"Creativity takes you places you never imagined. One idea leads to another. Curiosity becomes experimentation. Somewhere along the way, I found myself creating bags.

"Not because the world needed another bag. Because I had something I wanted to make.

"As a Brand Decoder for 30 years, working with companies understanding identity and helping other people discover what made them different, I was ready to explore that quest in my own way.

"That's how it all started in Mexico."

HARD TO BELIEVE - tote

A THIRD-CULTURE KID

Born in Venezuela to a Canadian mother and a Dutch sea captain, Mary van de Wiel (aka Van) has lived on four continents—South America, Canada, Europe (the Netherlands) and Australia—before she turned 15.

No surprise she learned at an early age how to scope out the horizon and interpret the invisible clues, no matter what the country, culture or language. It seemed the best way to sense her place and identity in the world, and give it meaning.

That instinct later became the foundation of her 30-year career in brand identity.

STORMY WEATHER - crossbody zippered sleeve

MESSENGER BAG OBSESSION

In her 30s in New York City, Van was totally mesmerized by all the cool courier dudes biking up Avenue of the Americas with their massive vinyl messenger bags slung across their backs. She loved that look. She's been wearing eclectic vinyl messenger bags ever since.

WON’T STOP NOW - crossbody zippered sleeve

WHEN PAINTINGS BECOME CHAIRS

Fast forward to Sydney, Van was invited to hold her first exhibition at the Saint Cloche Gallery in Paddington. Her abstract paintings brought the walls to life, but it was her black-and-white upholstery prints that turned retro chairs into extraordinary objects. The chairs were snapped up immediately. That's exactly when the idea landed: print the work on vinyl messenger bags.

OVER THE MOON - cellphone bag

FINDING THE RIGHT ATELIER

Back in San Miguel de Allende, Van contacted the Chamber of Commerce in Leon, Mexico's manufacturing capital. They introduced her to five handbag makers, and she chose one atelier which she still works with closely. For the first time in her life, she's deciding what makes a bag a bag: zippers, shapes, length of a strap, color of the lining, etc.

WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG? - messenger bag

CARRIED INTO MUSEUMS

Her bags were first sold in the design shops of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco as well as the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Her first public art exhibition, What Were You Thinking, was unveiled in New York City in 2019 at the UBS Bank HQ at 1285 Avenue of the Americas and West 51. It's still on view.

Every bag still begins as a black-and-white painting.

Galería Van de Wiel
Calle Julian Carillo 5, Colonia Guadalupe
Wednesday-Saturdays 11am-4pm
van@shopvandewiel.com +1 213-361-7500

shopvandewiel.com
instagram.com/shopvandewiel
instagram.com/maryvandewiel
facebook.com/maryvandewiel

Poncho
Art On & Off the Wall

LIVING OUT LOUD abstract artwork interpreted across this poncho knitted in México City w/ swishes of red + orange showing up only on the back. But right now, new ponchos are being made in CDMX with 100% BLACK + WHITE on the front AND back: so they’ll be totally #blackLineCrazy! One or two original ponchos (w/ dashes of color) are now in the Galeria but not for long!

GALERÍA VAN DE WIEL is a small eclectic gallery offering visitors something unexpected: the artwork of a woman who spent more than three decades shaping the identities of global brands.

With Brooklyn and Sydney as her base, Dutch creative brand strategist Mary van de Wiel (aka Van) enjoyed a 30-year career in branding and identity consulting before turning her focus toward art in San Miguel de Allende. Last year, she opened the doors to her Galería, something she'd never dreamed of doing! A "brand psychologist," who helped entrepreneurs and companies uncover the deeper story behind their brands, Van now uncovers her own art.

"Identity is something we continuously shape and reveal."

GALERÍA VAN DE WIEL, contemporary and deeply personal, is both a working studio and an exhibition space. Van's artworks explore themes of transformation, memory, and personal narrative. Informed by how identity is expressed in the world around us, they're drawing on her background in branding, where understanding human perception is essential.

Many of van de Wiel's early pieces were created when she first arrived in San Miguel in 2016. Renting a bare studio, she bought a can of black house paint and a massive roll of paper and for the first time in her life, started to paint floor to ceiling. The process changed her life. Later, working with acrylic paint, she drew attention from galleries in San Miguel de Allende, Sydney, Australia, and New York City, where one of her major Public Art Installations still stands in the UBS Bank HQ at 1285 Avenue of the Americas and West 51st Street.

Because Van believes that "art belongs in everyday life, not just on walls" she began transferring her original paintings onto objects found in everyday life: area rugs, upholstery, lighting fixtures, bags, and unisex ponchos. She works with Mexico's master weavers to produce her one-of-a-kind area rugs and throws, each one handwoven using 100% wool sourced from the State of Guanajuato. Her latest functional works are sculptural metal light forms, each based on an original van de Wiel painting.

Van's gallery is the culmination of her life's work—a place where branding, psychology, and artistic exploration meet.

Galería Van de Wiel
Calle Julian Carillo 5, Colonia Guadalupe
Wednesday-Saturdays 11am-4pm
van@shopvandewiel.com +1 213-361-7500

shopvandewiel.com
instagram.com/shopvandewiel
instagram.com/maryvandewiel
facebook.com/maryvandewiel

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