Featured Artist Maryanne Hawes

Artist Maryanne Hawes paints intuitively, creating abstract art through spontaneous brushstrokes and expressive, energized marks and shapes. Learn more about this artist by visiting her website.

 

 

I’m lucky enough to live and work in the verdant Wye Valley (in Great Britain) with one foot in England and one in Wales. I also have strong family attachments to Cornwall and the West Country, which is a renowned source of inspiration for many artists.

 

 

I’m relatively new to painting. I started in earnest only a few months before my fiftieth birthday, only a couple of years ago. Having said this, the urge has been brewing in me for a long time and I scratched my creative itches with careers in garden design and subsequently as a professional portrait photographer. Both experiences gave me a sound grounding in colour and composition.

 

 

I’m fascinated by people, and by what makes us tick. Through my painting I like to think I’m exploring the uncharted territories of our minds; how we see the world through filters of memory, emotion, experience and relationships.

 

 

Although sometimes you might see in my work whispers of shapes or forms or colours that echo a real landscape, I’m as much influenced by the unseen energies of people and places.

 

 

I paint intuitively. I rarely have an idea of the shape and form a piece will ultimately take. A canvas will usually begin with free writing in various media—pencil, charcoal, ink, and a stream of consciousness in words and mark making. Some of them will end up showing through to the final surface, but most will be buried under subsequent layers.

 

 

The process continues with applications of many layers of acrylic paint, scraping back and sanding of dry layers and drawing into wet.

 

 

I think of it as echoing the push/pull that we often experience emotionally. A descent into chaos and feeling overwhelmed, followed by a calming, a slowing down, until ultimately a dynamic but peaceful balance is met.

 

 

I very much believe in the intuitive viewing as well as making of art. I want my art to help people connect with their senses, their thoughts; to offer an opportunity for a mindful or contemplative moment in the day. I believe that a viewer’s interpretation of my art is equally as valuable as my own.

 

 

After completing my first solo show earlier this year, I am now exploring ways of melding my photography background into my art practice. I’m interested in how memories and emotions can be expressed in painterly form as well as an abstracted form of photography.

 

 

I’m not sure where this might lead – watch this space!

 

Artist Maryanne Hawes invites you to follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

 

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