Mary Jo Major was born in Edmonton, AB, and since then she has traveled widely. In Australia she taught and studied painting at the Melbourne Institute of Technology. In Indonesia she learned the art of batik, then studied at the Ècole des Beaux Arts, Aix-en-Provence, subsequently earning her BFA at Concordia University in Montreal, QC. In 1992 she received her MFA from the University of Calgary. Mary Jo Major has achieved distinction as a painter and printmaker. Her work has been widely collected in such places as The New York Public Library, the Glenbow Museum (Calgary, Canada), the Whitechapel Library (London, England), the Canada Council Art Bank, and the University of Calgary Special Collections.