Mary Pratt (née West) is widely honoured for luminescent still life paintings in the contemporary realist style. Born (1935) and raised in Fredericton, NB, she earned a BFA from Mount Allison University in 1961. She moved to Newfoundland in 1959 and had her first solo exhibition here in 1967, at the Memorial University Art Gallery in St. John's. Her work has since been in solo and group shows across Canada. A retrospective exhibit was mounted at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton in 1995 and subsequently travelled the country.

Among the many awards Pratt has received are eight honorary degrees and induction into the Newfoundland and Labrador Hall of Honour in 1994. In 1997 she was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize and elected a Companion of the Order of Canada. She has written one book, A Personal Calligraphy (2000), and been the subject of others, notably The Art of Mary Pratt: The Substance of Light, by Tom Smart (1995), and Mary Pratt, by Sandra Gwyn and Gerta Moray (1989).

Mary Pratt lives and works in Newfoundland. Her paintings are in many private and corporate collections, as well as in the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John's, and Canada House in England.