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Artist Statement:
Asheville, NC based artist
Genie Maples' art engages,
soothes the spirit, and
stimulates emotion. These
luminous oil and encaustic
paintings are created by
building up multiple thin
layers of opaque scumbles and
transparent glazes. Individual
colors blend, transform, bleed
through, flirt and hide,
creating a mesmerizing whole.
The result is a sophisticated
and complex work.
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Artist Exhibitions:
Selected exhibitions
2008 February - Spotlight on
Art, Atlanta, Georgia
2008 May - November, Solo
Exhibition, Sante', Asheville,
North Carolina
2007 November - 2008 January,
Solo Show, Studio B,
Asheville, North Carolina
2007 June: Solo exhibition,
Visual Poetry, Asheville,
North Carolina
2007 October: Group Show,
Artclectic, Nashville,
Tennessee
2007 October - November:
Group Show, ...
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Artist Galleries:
The Rice Gallery, Overland
Park, Kansas, USA
Kress2Gallery, Asheville,
North Carolina
Sirani Gallery, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania
Chrysalis Gallery,
Southampton, New York
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Collections:
Overture Financial, New York,
New York, USA
Earthscape Designs, LLC,
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Poppy Seed, LLC, Quincy,
Massachusetts, USA
Hope Lodge, Rochester, New
York, USA
Dr Michael Carolan, New York,
New York, USA
Ms. Leslie Fruman, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada
Mr. Robert Ruiz, Torrance,
California, USA
Mr. Floyd Parton, Clarksville,
Tennessee, ...
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Commissions:
Hope Lodge, Rochester, New
York, USA
Ms. Pamela Bernhardt, The
Woodlands, Texas, USA
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Reviews for Genie Maples:
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"Visual Poetry" - One Critic's Perspective
by Janiece Marie Meek, Editor of The Critical Review
I watched as she approached the blank canvas, armed with a collection of four paint brushes in her back hip pocket, two paper plates loaded with color, and a palette knife that kept returning to the dish for more. A mark of color went on the canvas, then another, and I began to hear the dialogue between artist and canvas emerge out of nothingness. The studio was completely quiet, except for the questions posed by the artist as she scratched, swabbed, and rubbed the canvas, then stood back and waited patiently, as if listening for a reply from somewhere far beyond the stark white of the beginning.
Genie Maples' studio was flooded with late-Fall morning light when I visited to preview her show, "Visual Poetry." Lined with uncounted canvases of varying sizes, the studio was charged with the color - but not overly so, for my taste. Standing in the midst of the work, which she collectively calls "Visual Poetry," one senses the dynamo behind it all, yet there stood the artist, a petite and decorous woman, and mother of three. When we talked about her path to painting - how she came to recognize her artistry - she spoke almost apologetically, in terms that made me wonder if she views herself as an outsider because her history is unlike others she holds in esteem.
Twelve years into her marriage and three children later, Maples was a full-time mother when she realized that she needed to remove herself and three children from the life they had known. One afternoon, while cleaning up after an art project with her children, she was drawn to a particular color of yellow, and with it, created her first painting using q-tips the children used instead of brushes. An art therapist would say it was not coincidence that she was drawn to the color yellow: it is used in therapy to restore self-confidence and pleasure in life. What her mind could not understand, her heart knew perfectly well, and she began to paint with a fury. By 2004, she had left her marriage, and had painted - and sold - more than $100,000 in paintings in an unexpected but highly profitable art venue: e-Bay. Maples had succeeded in providing a healthy environment for her children, supporting them financially, and through the sheer effort of producing such a volume of work, she learned a great deal about creating art and the business of art - on a par with what one might achieve through art school.
Paintings with thought-provoking titles such as "Reason, Eclipsed," "In my Boat," and "The Breach" are journeys through interior landscapes in more than name, only. A large painting, "Reason, Eclipsed" is full of life, with swishes of white leaping about and ascending toward the heavens like the fully awakened spirit, against a backdrop of turquoise, indigo, and orange. At water's edge, a figure stands peacefully in front of a column of indigo in the painting named "In My Boat." In terms of the spirit, the midnight blue of indigo is believed to expand the vision of the psyche such that past, present, and future are a whole unified picture, and it is easy to imagine the boat as the vessel that takes us on the journey through all of life. But perhaps Maples' story really begins in "The Breach," where an ocean of parchment-like yellow is connected to a purplish-indigo sky, with slivers of turquoise peaking through the horizon and a central portal, joined by an inquisitive yellow patch. The literal description is only a preface to the fascinating spiritual perspective of a color theorist: that one's inner life is firmly grounded in comfortable self-worth and achievement, and is balanced by connection to spiritual life - consisting of both the quest for and discovery of truth - and the breach that occurs is the refreshment of the spirit, following struggle to reach equilibrium.
"Visual Poetry" exemplifies Maples' instinctual understanding of the complex relationship between colors and demonstrates that she is in command of her artistry by completely relinquishing herself to it. Ethereal signs and symbols emerge from joyful and dynamic colors of the cosmos. Poetic metaphors reference journeys and bridge crossings, portals through which we may or may not choose to pass, and the ever-present horizons - if we can only clear our vision in order to see that far. Her most recent works on paper are clearly more sensual - even sexual - than work painted earlier in the year, and these are appropriately integrated within the context of her visual poetry. After all, her painting is about the joy of life.
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Genie Maples blends the spiritual and the erotic in every canvas. She renders ghosts, joys, music, hope, mornings, wind and memories with almost every stroke. Her work doesn?t come from a need to survive, but wells up from life itself. Her paintings are magical glass, and through every window, I see her.
-Ron Franscell, collector, Managing Editor, Beaumont Enterprise
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