Maryann Maingard

Maryann Maingard was born in England. She retains that country’s elegance and delicacy - traits that have been part of her artistic practice for several decades. She adapts to a multitude of spaces and often works in large formats. Since 2010, she has been permanently exhibited at the Josie Eastwood Fine Art Gallery in England. Her paintings can now be found hanging in all four corners of Earth, from Australia to the United States, from England to the Indian Ocean.

Her art is made up of the life that she sees around her. Maryann Maingard deals in landscapes with a particular fondness for trees. She creates universes tinged with strangeness that are usually devoid of humans. The poetry and peculiarity of these landscapes seem to echo the fragility of Nature and reflect a certain nostalgia. The artist uses a varied palette when looking at her entire collection. She tends to work with a series of tones within a single painting.

This is therefore a body of work in which Nature is intimidated rather than represented.

Maryann keeps coming back to her canvas, even at times multiple canvases simultaneously. She works in the cool of the day to create blurs, to manipulate the thickness of the material with brush and knife, to achieve textural and superficial effects. She makes use of repentance and pays with impasto and glaze, working the piece repeatedly until she gets the result she desires.

Oil painting is the painter’s technique “par excellence”. But it remains Maryann Maingard’s preferred medium because of the innumerable possibilities that is offers.

Describing her work, she says “it’s something that I feel, something that I know how to do”. These words, that are even more powerful for their simplicity, invite us to question what is at stake in her practice. Maryann is referring both to her perceptions - to her feelings and emotions – and to what feels to her like a purpose, a necessity, a duty. A calling to paint, to which she has no choice but to submit, like a quest that is bigger than she is and from which there is no escape. This is what allows her medium to endure, and enables her to leave an indelible mark in Mauritius and the homes of all her collectors around the world.