" McHugh has made a career of painting pears and nude women with pears; whether the women are present or not, the curvaceousness of the fruit suggests that of the well-endowed woman. McHugh’s pears frequently interact like people, too, as if “Entangled II,” in which two pears painted in rich tones of gold and copper seem to embrace, their stems intertwined…In her most recent works, McHugh draws ever more attention to the pear stems, which now appear exaggerated and sinuous. In more than one instance, the interlocking stems form the centerpiece of a paintings of three pears whose rounded shaped suggest ample buttocks."

-Peg Churchill Wright, Daily Gazette

" Marie-Louise McHugh is showing her work based on images of the female figure and pears;…’I find true pleasure in playing with their (pears’) form and essence, their repetition and transformation,’ writes McHugh. One of her themes, she adds, ‘is also the aging of the female body and the beauty I see in its changes.’ As painted by McHugh, in great detail, strong light and a rich palette based in the European tradition of oils, the pear has distinctive shape, color and personality; hers are definitely anthropomorphic pears. McHugh goes beyond examination of her favorite fruit, and female forms, with two narrative paintings… McHugh’s ‘Journey,’…a pear in one outstretched hand, looks from land and home toward the distant ocean, and an island of pears. It’s a life-affirming painting that goes a long way toward summing up what McHugh wants to tell us about pears, and females."

-Peg Churchill Wright, Daily Gazette

" McHugh has on occasion popped up on the local aesthetic radar in her lusciously striking oil paintings of pears…it is the most welcome battery of images, particularly as McHugh directly states the case for her unapologetic preoccupation with the fruit and its associative resonances with the female body. She makes her passion explicit and gives a rich account of the returns for her attention. On a more mechanical level, the array shows McHugh conscientiously exploiting the liberating auspices of surrealism and fantasy. So much hardly makes for a well-rounded diet, yet seldom do we find an artist united with a beautiful object that so aptly and completely satiates the sensuous requirements of her art. Rather than focusing on constraint of subject matter, one grows increasingly impressed by the undaunted vigor with which McHugh undertakes her extended exploration of flavored fleshes."

-Rich Kreiner, Metroland

"Marie-Louise McHugh seems obsessed by pears, as she uses the fruit as a symbol of life itself. Her punning titles…make effective use of the analogy between human and vegetable forms."

-Helen A. Harrison, New York Times