So it's been a while since we posted the last installment in the life of Disney legend Mary Blair.

Let me quickly just catch everyone up with what generally happened in the last few episodes,

so then we're ready to push forward today.

In 1941, Mary traveled with her husband, Lee, and other Disney artists to Latin America to develop material

for the Goodwill Pictures, including Saludos Amigos.

The following year after, Lee left to develop training films with the Navy, she returned

to Mexico to develop material for the three Caballeros.

After that, she traveled to Cuba, where she worked on material

for a third but never produced Goodwill Picture, largely focused on the Caribbean.

During the war years, Mary lived in California with her friend and animator Reda Scott,

the two of them dividing the house she once shared with Lee. Reda also watched the house as Mary visited Lee in Virginia and while she traveled to Georgia

to explore concepts for Song of the South.

Though at one point, Lee had been higher on the list of important concept artists at the Disney

studio than Mary, during the Disney Studio than Mary.

During the war years, as Mary's style evolved, taking in both modern and folk elements,

she quickly became one of, if not, the most important concept artist at the Disney Studio.

The only concept artist whose studio work also embraced

some elements of modern art movements, then being explored in Europe, particularly the move away

from linear one and two-point perspectives that offered a believable illusion of depth and a painting.

Beyond her work as a concept artist, Walt also looked to her as a color stylist

to help define the palette that would be used to define emotion in individual scenes

and through the course of a picture.

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