Mary Anne Bartley, artist, teacher

MOST PEOPLE'S teenage years are a challenge, but in Mary Anne Bartley's case, getting through them was a matter of life and death.

At the age of 16, she was diagnosed with acute rheumatic heart disease, which kept her confined to bed and forced her to be schooled at home.

Nevertheless, she graduated at the top of her class at Upper Darby High School, sharing honors with fellow students she had never met.

Her attainment came with severe reservations.

"I watched my fellow top 10 graduates receive full scholarships to leading universities," she once said. "I was wished 'Good luck.' "

As it happened, luck was on her side. An experimental surgical technique brought about full recovery and Mary Anne went on to four decades of accomplishment as an artist and art teacher.

She died July 2 at the age of 73. She was living in Fairmount but had lived most of her life in Upper Darby.

Mary Anne's specialty as a teacher was developing programs that were as therapeutic as they were creative. She taught HIV/AIDS patients, prisoners, the elderly, nursing and medical students and homeless men at St. John's Hospice.

One day in 1994, secretaries, project managers, supervisors and other employees of the SmithKline Beacham Corp. in King of Prussia found themselves drawing faces.

It was Mary Anne Bartley's way of bringing out their inner creative child as part of a program by the corporation to reduce job-related stress through art, massage, motivational speeches and other activities.

"We were looking for a way for people to get outside of themselves," she said at the time. "Art is very simple and very effective."

Mary Anne was artist-in-residence at Villanova University at the time.

Over the years, she was also artist-in-residence at St. John's Hospice, Siloam Ministries and WHYY.

At WHYY she created "Healing," a collection of portraits that were included in the station's Wider Horizons National Forum on Living with Grief, which aired in 2004.

Her mostly abstract art was concentrated on the connection between mind, body and spirit, a link that she developed during her years as a convalescent.

Her installations and solo exhibitions apperared at Villanova, Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Krasdale Galleries in White Plains, N.Y., Virtua Memorial Hospital in Mt. Holly, N.J., and others.

Her paintings are part of the permantent collection at the Villanova University Art Center.

"I'm just an artist from Upper Darby," she liked to say.

"The ultimate value of art is its power to unlock the imagination and teach people how to think."

Mary Anne credited Dr. John Y. Templeton III for saving her life. He performed a then-experimental procedure called mitral commissurotomy to correct severe advanced mitral stenosis - the closing of the mitral valve in the heart.

She dedicated a painting, "Homage to Healers," to him.

In addition to her art career, Mary Anne was a former national vice president and director of the Medical Division of the American Foundation for Negro Affairs' National Education and Research Fund.

The program has provided college educations to thousands of young people across the country.

She is survived by four brothers, James (Brother Andrew of the Christian Brothers), John Paul, David Ronald and Joseph. She was predeceased by a sister, Kathleen Mediano.

Services: Funeral Mass 7 this evening at the Student Chapel at La Salle College High school, 8605 Cheltenham Ave., Wyndmoor. Friends may call at 5 p.m. Interment will be private.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Christian Brother Community at La Salle College High School, at ZIP code 19038. *