Mary Engelbreit:  Artist and Entrepreneur

Beloved artist Mary Engelbreit has range of licensed products that stretches from fabric to calendars, an award-winning magazine, 150 book titles in print and hundreds of millions of greeting cards sold. Mary’s unmistakable illustration style — imbued with spirited wit and nostalgic warmth — has won her fans the world over.

It all began with a young girl who just had 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 went to work directly out of high school at an art supply store in St. Louis. Over the next few years she worked for a small ad agency, accepted freelance projects on the side, held independent art showings, and even worked for a short time as an editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but what she truly wanted was to be a children’s book illustrator.

In 1977, she took her portfolio to New York to try her luck at some well-known publishing houses. She received a "mild reception" from publishers and a suggestion from one art director that she try her hand illustrating greeting cards. "I was kind of crushed at the time," she recalls.

But soon enough, Mary realized that the suggestion had merit. She found that the greeting card format played well into her style of illustration.

Once Mary shifted her talent and energy to greeting cards, success came quickly. As her greeting card line grew in size and popularity, it drew attention from other companies anxious to license Mary’s artwork on a wide range of products including calendars, T-shirts, mugs, gift books, rubber stamps, ceramic figurines, and a list that’s grown to include nearly 6,500 products in all. These days, thousands of retailers (including The Mary Engelbreit Store at the Saint Louis Galleria) sell Mary Engelbreit products. And now – more than 25 years after that trip to New York – Mary IS illustrating a series of children’s books for publishing giant HarperCollins – a dream come true. As a result, her art has also come to life through the children’s animated video based on her best-selling book illustration of The Night Before Christmas.

Mary and her family live in St. Louis, Missouri, where she grew up. For more information about Mary, her artwork and her products, please visit www.maryengelbreit.com.