Maria Ludwika McClafferty was born and educated in Warsaw, Poland.
She settled in London in 1969 and started her career in art in 1970 as a painter printmaker, having exhibitions of her work in India, America, Canada, Australia, Poland, Sweden as well as England and in and around London. Her etchings are on permanent display at Museum Narodowe in Warsaw.
In 1981 she turned to glass as a medium. Working in stained glass and fused glass her work has been installed internationally.
In the UK works in public buildings include:
The Rose window at Alexandra Palace; stained glass panels in the Great Hall, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; bronze and glass for the Egyptian Hall at Harrods (with English Heritage Preservation Order) and fused glass and bronze sculpted lamps and Pharaoh Heads in the escalator hall at Harrods; and large sand-blasted panels for Princess Square (Glasgow) and Monument Mall (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) shopping centers.
Private clients among others include: Liberty's of London, the Duke of Wellington, the Sultan of Brunei, His Excellency Sheik Zair, A.S. Bayat
From 2000 , she continued her art in Grenada, West Indies where she set up a glass studio and completed numerous public and private commissions. That includes 20 ft high Stained Glass Window for Catholic Cathedral in St George's and other churches around the island, large sculpture in bronze "The Spirit of the Island" for Changchun World Sculpture Park, China, and the monument of Sir Eric Gairy the First Pryminisrter of Grenada.
2013 marks a new development- an encaustic hot wax painting which in 2015 together with her large triptych of fused glass panels were exhibited at 56th Venice Biennale in Venice. Maria continues her work in art, had many exhibitions in UK as well as internationally and is back in UK