Mary Heilmann (1940–2026) was an American painter, ceramicist and sculptor known for colorful abstractions that combine geometric forms with personal memories, popular culture and an intentionally informal approach to painting. Born in San Francisco, Heilmann earned a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1962 and an M.A. in ceramics and sculpture from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967, where she studied with Peter Voulkos. While a graduate student, she took an independent study at UC Davis with William T. Wiley, where the experimental environment encouraged her to pursue an idiosyncratic approach to art making that became central to her career. After moving to New York in 1968, she shifted from sculpture to painting, treating paint almost like ceramic glaze and building translucent layers and emphasizing the canvas itself as an object rather than simply a surface for an image. In 1977, Heilmann returned to UC Davis as a visiting artist and created her Davis Square paintings in tribute to her formative experiences there. In its 2022 exhibition Mary Heilmann: Squaring Davis, the Manetti Shrem Museum brought together her rarely seen mid-1960s ceramics and sculpture, along with her Davis Square paintings.