Maryanne Hawes
Artist Maryanne Hawes came to painting in mid-life having previously worked and studied in such diverse fields as geography and the environment, garden design, photography and positive psychology. These strands of varied experience combine together to form a rich foundation to the art she now creates.
Her work explores the unseen energies of people, spaces and places, how that energy affects our perception of the world, and how it relates to a complex and changing emotional topography.
Mapping, navigating and understanding this ‘psychological territory’ in paint, Maryanne works at a level of abstraction in which definite interpretation is barely possible, offering instead the suggestion of a landscape moulded by thought and experience.
Her frequent use of collage implies a fragmentation and a splicing together of contrasting places or moods, and graffiti-like texts often find their way into her artworks, paying homage to the value she places on the written word.