Wishing Mary Weatherford (@maryweatherford) a happy birthday! Weatherford has become recognized as one of the leading painters of her generation, as well as one of the most astute and daring practitioners taking on the legacies of American abstraction. As she explores and expands the medium’s possibilities, she honors its history by seizing opportunities to break with tradition at every turn. Over the course of her career, she has produced feminist revisions of large-scale Color Field painting, posited new directions for the landscape genre, and explored the social histories of California. Her notable incorporation of sculptural elements—including the neon tubes that have been a presence in her work since 2012—as well as her fearless and physically embodied approach to painterly gesture, have allowed her to employ abstraction as both a formal language and a poetic, highly personal mode of engagement with the world outside the studio. Portrait of #MaryWeatherford: Elena Dorfman (@dorfmanelena)