MARY BURKETT ART

Mary Burkett is an ordinary person called to extraordinary circumstances. She is a wife, mother and grandmother. Having had no artistic training, in January 2017, she began to create a living memorial to precious children killed in the Holocaust. In seven short months, Beloved: Children of the Holocaust, a collection of 27 beautiful portraits, was complete.

In December of 2017, Mary was inspired to begin a new collection honoring the lives of children, both enslaved and free, in the second half of 19th Century America. This collection is now comprised of 14 portraits, known as Beloved: Legacy of Slavery. An associated collection, Beloved: Restoration was completed in 2019.

Mary went on to draw Beloved: Unfinished Lives, a small collection of portraits from the Warsaw Ghetto. She is currently working on a collection entitled Beloved: 10,000. When complete, Beloved: 10,000 will be comprised of 150 portraits, each of which will represent 10,000 children who died in the Holocaust. Mary is also collaborating with the Anne Frank Center on a traveling exhibit to be available in 2024 entitled In the Land of Wooden Shoes, a Holocaust Remembrance. 

Mary's portraits and short stories of the Holocaust are seen and read by millions worldwide each year. She is the author of The Little Book of Heroes, and the documentary of her work, also entitled Beloved Children of the Holocaust, is in international distribution. 

Mary's work continues to honor the lives of children forgotten by time and history. Her work has been described as “An inspired initiative with a precise purpose: that mankind knows the atrocities of the historical past and never repeats them.”