"All of my inspiration comes from very specific locations in Chicago, but I have never been interested in pure representation. To keep them based in reality - for instance, using some light and shadow references - but also to give them an element of mystery, to make scrap trucks, water towers and bridges suggestive of other things requires extreme tweaking and editing. This process is instinctive and really gratifying to me. Because I work with such basic elements -charcoal and paper - I have found over and over again that less is more. When it works, I'm telling a gothic urban fable in the simplest, strongest way."

Mary Livoni, from FACTIO magazine's 2009 interview