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About

About/Bio
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Janet Maya’s paintings center on issues of race, gender, sexual acceptance, and socio-economic equality. Her art juxtaposes rich black, brown and white silhouettes against colorful backgrounds in boldly simple compositions. Texture is added to give a tactile quality to the surface and form is softly abstracted. With barely delineated facial features, her figures evoke questions about identity and characteristics hidden behind facades.  Maya uses stance, posture, and attitude to convey the grounded nature and confrontational aspects of each figure; at the same time, her use of abstracted form leaves them open to varied interpretations. Cultural diversity sparking from from her Colombian, Irish and English heritage progressively becomes apparent.

Many life experiences have influenced Maya’s work. Her artistically inclined mother, intensely encouraged her to evolve in the arts. Her father collected art when he did business in Nigeria and other regions. Early on, she learned about artists of the famed Oshogbo School which arose in the newly independent Nigeria of the early 1960's. A Nigerian friend lived with Maya’s family in the States while she attended Mary Mount College and the friend’s stories of home and her spirituality fascinated the artist. When attending New York’s School of Visual Art, Maya often went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, finding inspiration in the African exhibits that were straightforward in expressing the sex of female and male.

Global politics is of life-long interest that began when her father engaged with regions that were in the midst of revolutionary turmoil. Exposed to political uprise in other countries, the fight for basic freedoms has been part of her life. Growing up through the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War has added to her work as well. An additional impetus to Maya’s art is her spiritual connection to life. As well, inner strength is a major theme throughout, though it is joined with an understanding of ever-present vulnerability to outside conventions.

Bio

Bio

JANET MAYA

American, born New York 1962

 

Education

 

School of Visual Arts, New York, NY 1983-1986

SUNY Empire State College, NY 2013

 

Exhibitions

September 8 2022 Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut

                                Dec 5 2021 Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut

                                                                2020 Marquee Projects, Bellport, New York

2022 Marquee Projects, Bellport, New York

                     Scope Art Fair, New York (upcoming)

                                                            2019 Art Miami, Miami, Florida

                                                                       2018 Dovecote, Westport, Connecticut

                                                                      2017 Dovecote, Westport, Connecticut 

                                                                                   2016 Nyack, New York

         2012 Office of the Governor of the State of New York, Washington D.C.

                        2003 University at Albany, State University of New York

                                                                         Consulate, New York, New York

                                                              2000-01 City Hall, Jersey City, New Jersey

                                                   1999 Wizard World Comic Con, Chicago, Illinois 

                                                     1998 Wizard World Comic Con, Chicago, Illinois

 

Special Projects/Commissions

 

PSA (Domestic Violence Services) Dutchess County, New York 

State of New York, documentary

State of New Jersey, documentary

 

Scenic Design

 

Music Videos (various artists)

Showtime at the Apollo

Motion Picture and Brand/Corporate film & video (Michelin, Verizon 

New York Times, Nickelodeon)

 

Teaching/Workshops

 

The Summit School, Nyack, New York

YMCA, New York

 

Collections

Available Upon Request

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Press

Press

Marquee Projects in Bellport, Long Island presents 'Strangers in Stranger Lands' exhibition

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CB0XfELFtvo/?igshid=vrad8h38gldy

 

"...The soul of the show, however, may be Janet Maya’s 2017 painting, Blessing, with its single faceless female figure holding her hands together in a redemptive gesture of prayer, rendered with the forms and pastels of Milton Avery. Another work by Maya, placed in the gallery’s window, speaks to the hopes and fears of the moment: two almost identical female figures, one black and one white, that achieve a poetic unity despite their outward difference..."

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http://deliciousline.org/dq/content/2020-07-20T1625/

"...Janet Maya’s partially erased faces depict Quaker-like humility congruent with a loss of identity. My gaze lingers over the balance and reversals of Girls 2, returning for refreshment to four submerged feet..."

Contact

Contact

Janet Maya

Email : Janet@janetmaya.com

OR

 

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