About the Artist
Laurie Maves has been an artist her entire life, but she has only recently acted on that truth. Even after completing her bachelors and masters in the arts, she only recently has taken herself seriously as an artist, and is now pursuing her gift and craft full time. After growing up in a rural town in Illinois she moved to Chicago only to find that was too much city for her. Laurie found an oasis of sorts in Denver, CO, where she has lived for the past 12 years. Even though Denver is often still considered by many to be a "cow town" Laurie is on the cutting edge of emerging artists in the city and helping to establish it as one of the up and coming art meccas in the nation.
Laurie is first and foremost a painter. She paints poppies, lollipop heads, faces, musicians, energy and color. She paints privately in her studio, but often times video records her creative process which she shares, in order for her audience to not only further understand her process but to be entertained as well. She also paints publicly as a live painter and has recently become one of Denver’s premier live painters and is booked regularly by musicians and event coordinators to capture performances, special events, as well as private parties.
As an artist and a painter, Laurie realizes she has a gift and has a deep appreciation for that gift. Her ultimate goal is to share that gift and its brilliance with the world, with the hopes that she will inspire others to follow their own passions and to live their lives with purpose.
Laurie's Newest Project: Knitting IS Sexy:
www.knittingissexycalendar.com Find all about our project that not only is about women empowering women to discover their true beauty, inside and out, but also helps feed the mouths of babes in one of the world's most impoverished countries, Ethiopia www.cunninghamfoundation.org. Every calendar from this project sold provides approximately 7 meals and a day of school for a young Ethiopian child in Yetebon.
Artist Statement
The feminine of my trash to treasure metaphor.
For over a decade now I have been painting women: women who smile, women who frown, women who pout, women who ponder. I was often influenced by such masters as Botticelli, Modigliani, Gauguin and Picasso.
In the beginning of 2006 my work began to change and evolve. I used more materials, started to pour paint, added assemblage, and increasing amounts of text, written or collaged onto my canvases. With the text, it seemed as if these women were beginning to tell their stories instead of plain existing. After viewing the diary of Frida Kahlo, followed by my introduction to the raw and biting work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, I found a stronger calling to look further into what these feminine figures were all about. Botticelli’s Venus imagery as well as likenesses of Frida began to surface in my paintings along with red faces, big orb-like eyes, swirling trees and layers upon layers of COLOR. I gradually came to the realization that all these feminine figures I was painting for the last decade were all aspects of me, compositions of Laurie, and what goes on in her trippy little mind. I often lack words to describe what I’m feeling or experiencing on any given Sunday, therefore, my painting becomes my way of communicating with the world – a way for me to compose the diary of my life, a way to tell my own story through my imagery.
In 2007, I began to spend a greater deal of my time painting and needed more surfaces to work on. I had the notion of reworking some older pieces and eventually repainted some paintings that no longer served me. I then began to focus on the recycling of “canvases,” be they old canvases of mine or someone else’s, wood panels, and even old siding that was found along the highway. In early 2008, at the suggestion of a friend, I added leather handbags that I gathered up from thrift stores to my list of interesting vistas for art. All these things that other people no longer needed or wanted, I looked at them in a new and different way – always trying to find the potential beauty in what others have let go. Sculptor Aaron Kramer’s statement, “Trash is the failure of imagination,” rings so true in my soul. I believe artists have a special responsibility in creating art to be as green as they possibly can, and use their own creativity to explore new ways of presenting the mundane and ordinary to the world in new and challenging ways. Why buy new canvases, when there is a load of stuff out there to work on that others would rather throw away? Someone else’s trash has slowly but surely become my land of treasure.
Presently and thematically, I continue to explore where my life is headed through my self-portraiture, figures and landscape painting, while always on the lookout for my own omens. I constantly wonder where and how and why I exist in the world, as I do, trying to find my own personal stillness in a mind that constantly races. While vowing to “never conform,” as a beautiful gallerina once told me, I will continue to explore how I recycle not only material things, but also relationships in my life, always looking for the treasure – in everything, in everyone.
Exhibitions & Live Painting
Laurie Maves, Artist Bio 2009,
Exhibitions
1994 Freeport Art Museum, Regional Young Artists, Freeport, IL, group show
1995 Bering Sea Art Exchange International, Petropvavlovsk, Russia, group show
1995 Woman Made Gallery, Life Cycles of Women, Chicago, IL, juried group show
1997 SAIC’s Gallery 57, The Graduate Exhibition, Chicago, IL, group show
2001 Flux Gallery, Denver, CO, group show
2002 Flux Gallery, Denver, CO, 2-person show
2003 The Gathering Place, Chicago, IL, group show
2003 ArtZ Gallery in Cherry Creek, Denver, CO
2004 Kamlet & Shepperd, The Diva Show, Denver, CO, juried group show
2006 4th Dimension Gallery Contours, Denver, CO, 2-person show
2006 The Other Side Arts Gallery, 5th Annual Women’s Show Denver, CO group show
2006 Red Rocks Country Club Art Walk, Morrison, CO, juried group show
2006 Lakewood Cultural Center, Crossings, Lakewood, CO, juried group show
2006 Square101 Gallery, Denver, CO, solo show
2006 Square101 Gallery, Denver, CO group show
2006 Lakewood Cultural Center, Holiday Artisans Show, Lakewood, CO, juried group
2007 Gallery Gustave @ Tastes, Denver, CO, solo show
2007 Kazzaz Art Corporation, Denver, CO, group show
2007 CORE New Art Space, Denver, CO juried group show
2007 Dynamis ART, Sante Fe, NM, group exhibition
2007 CAPSULE Events Center, Art-O-Mart, group show
2007 Art Students League of Denver Summer Art Market
2007 Soulrise Gallery, Denver, CO
2007 Lakewood Cultural Center, City Limits, Lakewood, CO, juried group
2007 ARTFARM, Denver Urban Gardens, Denver, CO, juried group
2007 Bath House Cultural Center, Dia de los Muertos Show, Dallas, TX, juried group
2007 Lakewood Cultural Center, Houses of the Dead, Lakewood, CO, juried group
2007 ZOMBIE show, Bad Art for Bad People, Denver, CO, juried group
2007 Denver Center for Performing Arts (DCPA), Denver, CO, juried group
2007 The Other Side Arts (TOSA), Denver, CO, group show with Laura Kazzaz
2008 855 Artist Studios, Denver, Colorado
2008 Square 101 Gallery, Denver, CO, solo show
2008 Lapis Gallery, the Attic Show, Denver, CO, group show
2008 Ditto Gallery, Denver, CO, group show
2008 Artwork Network, Denver, CO
2008 Ice House Cultural Center, Dia de los Muertos Show, Dallas, TX, juried group
2008 Lakewood Cultural Center, Dia de los Muertos Show, Lakewood, CO, juried group
2009 Citizen Pictures, solo show
2009 Englewood Art National Juried Show
Live Painting Events by Invitation
2003-2006 ARTOPIA, Denver, CO
2005, 2007 BareWalls, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
2003-2008 La Piazza dell Arte, Denver, CO
2007 Red Rocks Amphitheater, Live Painting with Zebra Junction,Comedian Josh Blue
2007 The Gothic Theater - Live Painting with Zebra Junction
2007 Dazzle Jazz Club, Denver, CO - Live Painting with the Ralph Sharon Trio
2007 the Mask Project Kick-off Party, Denver, CO
2008 CultureHaus, the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
2008 the Mask Project, Young Professionals Party, the Jet Hotel, Denver, CO
2008 the Shining Stars Foundation, Colorado History Museum, Denver, CO
2008 Zebra Junction CD release parties, Denver and Ft. Collins, CO
2008 the Bluebird Equation CD release party, Denver, CO
2008 for Rob Drabkin, singer/songwriter, the Soiled Dove Underground, Denver, CO
2008 MIAD's (Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design) Open Canvas, Milwaukee, WI
2008 Irgali Children's Library, mural project, Irgali, Ethiopia
2009 CharityROCK! for CU Boulder
2009 Feed Your Awareness Benefit for CU Denver
2009 for the HOPE BALL to benefit the Cunningham Foundation
2009 for JANET's CAMP
2009 for the Flobots and the Fray at the event: The Bowling Ball, to benefit www.flobots.org
2009 for MIAD's Open Canvas, Milwaukee, WI
Corporate and Celebritry Collections
David Cole and Associates, Denver, CO works on loan 2007-2009
Yanari, Watson and McGaughey, LLC, Greenwood Village, CO
Ralph Sharon, singer, jazz pianist
Brandi Carlile, singer/songwriter
Nina Storey, singer/songwriter
Leslie Feist, singer/songwriter - Feist
Rob Drabkin, singer/songwriter
Lisa Genee, singer/songwriter
John JR Robinson, drummer
Memberships
2000-2002 Flux Gallery, cooperative space, Denver, CO
2004-2006 Heritage, Culture and Arts Commission, Lakewood, CO
2006, 2008 The LAB of Art and Ideas, Lakewood, CO
2007 - present Artwork Network, Denver, CO
Education
1993 BS in Studio Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison
1997 MA in Art Therapy, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
