Mary MacKenzie spent her childhood in Africa, moving to Canada at the end of World War II.

Drawing has always been a part of her life. Her formal art education began in the 1960s in classes with Tony Only, Peter Aspell and Molly Boback. A semester at the Instituto at San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, was followed by the acquisition of a three-year diploma, with majors in painting and ceramics, from Kootenay School of Art.

In the 1970s she worked in the studio of Heinz Laffin. In the 1980s Mary's focus turned to stage management, design and painting of sets for Hornby Festival Society and Hornby Island Theatre Society and the design and organization for publication of Hornby Island: the Ebb and Flow, a local history book Returning in the 1990s to ceramics, drawing and painting, Mary now works and teaches in her studio on Hornby Island. She is strongly influenced by self-directed and university studies in anthropology and archaeology, evident particularly in raku bottles and slab work, and the Manuscript Series of pit fired experimental paper clay pieces.

Work from the 1960s to the present are in private collections in
Africa, Israel, Mexico, the U.S.A. and Canada.