Maya is a painter and a doll maker at the Northern Warehouse Artists’ Cooperative in St. Paul, MN. She values a simple hand-made life that incorporates color, nature and beauty and imparts these elements into her work.
Color is a vehicle I use to view and integrate my response to what is happening in the world around me. I may wake up feeling like the subdued color pink or a lively spring green may inspire my mood on other days. When I paint, I enter the multi-layered passionate World of Red. My work invites the viewer to move into a space of transcendence and joy through the use of vibrant color, texture, collage and images that impart a sense of mystery and magic behind the mundane.
Artistic expression has enabled me to actively engage with the world around me and to connect with others through the telling of a story on canvas and in textiles. I find painting to be an uplifting, liberating, expressive, joyous and fun experience that I have shared with disabled adults and children in a teaching environment over the years. Dollmaking also calls forth a spiritual connection as I focus on the spiritual value each doll embodies. I like to challenge the ideas presented in the media that the world is a hostile place to be in, and certainly, it is a challenging place to be in at times. Part of my teen and adult life has been spent living with the challenge of Epilepsy. In May of 2012 I moved into the Northern Warehouse Artists Cooperative in Lowertown, St. Paul, Minnesota and I have enjoyed being immersed in a supportive creative community that is inspiring me in so many ways. A word about Trees: I like to include some aspect of trees in my work as they are symbols of strength and growth, of Divine mystery and Earth consciousness joining in one ecstatic dance of Life. I love the concept and image of the Tree of Life and find there are so many layers of this image in daily life.
