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B. Michele Maynard
 
Artist Statement

Current work:
Too much information, too much to read, too much to watch, too much to experience- the internet has grabbed our collective psyche and made us all a little mentally ill. Constant distraction is an unhealthy situation. My complete overload is relieved by walking and sketching on our property and refusing the “attention economy “ for hours at a time. Drawing a blossom, a field, a face from an old abandoned photo back in the studio, requires attention of a very different sort than Instagram reels or the New York Times notifications. It’s a place to contemplate and calm down.


#artduringCovid

Pandemic lockdown resulted in a big shift in my work, a silver lining in my Covid cloud. Not able to travel and spend time with family and friends, I spent time with people and places by drawing and painting them referencing 30 years of photographs. My husband and I took these images while traveling and raising three sons, but I never had adequate time to peruse them. Lockdown gave me an opportunity to do this and the photos became the basis of my latest body of work. I went back to basics, spending newfound blocks of time to draw with oil stick and oil pastel from compilations of images. After a few months, I continued to develop this new direction in acrylic and flashe paint, employing the looser techniques I have used in my more abstract pieces.